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THE GREAT ADVENTURE 




From a photograph, copyright by Pirie MacDonald 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



THE 
GREAT ADVENTURE 

PRESENT-DAY STUDIES IN 
AMERICAN NATIONALISM 



BY 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1918 



>*1 



Copyright, 1918, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published November, 1918 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE CO. 




DEC -9 1918 



/^^ 



©CI.A508472 



TO 

ALL WHO IN THIS WAR HAVE PAID WITH 
THEIR BODIES FOR THEIR SOULs' DESIRE 



FOREWORD 

We should accept from Germany what our 
allies have wrung from Austria and Turkey — 
unconditional surrender. This ought to be our 
war aim; and until this war aim is achieved the 
peace terms should be discussed only with our 
allies and not with our enemies. In broad 
outline, it is possible now to state what these 
peace terms should include: Restitution by Ger- 
many of what she has taken and atonement for 
the wrong she has done; her complete military 
withdrawal from every foot of territory outside 
her own Hmits; and the giving not of ''au- 
tonomy" — a slippery word used by sHppery 
people to mean anything or nothing — but of 
complete independence to the races subject to 
the dominion of Germany, Austria, and Tur- 
key (which means the creation of the free com- 
monwealths of the Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, and 
Armenians, and therefore the expulsion of the 
Turk from Europe), the absolute freeing of Rus- 
sia from the German stranglehold, and aid gen- 
erously furnished by us to Russia, the retention 



viii FOREWORD 

by England and Japan of the colonies they have 
conquered, the restoration and indemnification 
of Belgium, the return of Alsace-Lorraine to 
France, the creating of a Jugo-Slav common- 
wealth, the joining to Italy of Italian Austria 
and to Roumania of Roumanian Hungary. 

When the manuscript of this volume was 
turned in, and even up to the time of the revi- 
sion of the last galley-proofs, it seemed that, 
as regards the major part of what is above set 
forth, I was taking substantially the position 
to which, after much hesitation, much indeci- 
sion, and much talking every which way, the 
administration was tending steadily to come. 
Apparently our government intended to fight 
the war through to the peace of overwhelming 
victory. Then, without warning, and apparently 
without consultation with our allies, the Presi- 
dent entered into a correspondence or negotia- 
tion about peace terms with Germany, which 
looked as if we had gotten back to the bad old 
days when note-writing and conversation were 
considered by Mr. Wilson as adroit and suffi- 
cient answers to the sinking of the Lusitania 
and similar German crimes. It was the atti- 
tude of an untrustworthy friend and an irreso- 



FOREWORD ix 

lute foe, and if accepted by the nation would 
have caused our people to forfeit their own 
self-respect and the respect of all other nations. 
However, the outburst of protest against the 
President's action was such that he promptly 
reversed himself again, and after having invited 
Germany's oifFer, repudiated it with indigna- 
tion. We all trust that he will persevere in 
this attitude; but we do not profess any cer- 
tainty of conviction in the matter. 

The Germans, while they are conducting 
their military retreat with formidable effi- 
ciency, are carrying on an adroit peace offen- 
sive, designed to save Germany from wreck 
and leave her an unpunished menace to the 
future of the world. They hope to succeed 
by appealing to those leaders of the Allies 
(especially in the United States) who are in- 
firm of purpose and wavering of will. 

What is needed at this time is not the com- 
pounding of felony by the discussion of terms 
with the felons, but the concentration and 
speedy development of our whole strength so 
as to overwhelm Germany in battle and to dic- 
tate to her the peace of unconditional sur- 
render. 



X FOREWORD 

Moreover, our people ought emphatically to 
repudiate the "fourteen points'' offered by 
President Wilson as a satisfactory basis for 
peace. We ought likewise to repudiate all of 
his similar proposals (some of his utterances 
have been satisfactory, but all of these have 
been contradicted by his other utterances, and 
no one can be sure which set of utterances will 
receive his ultimate adherence). Some of these 
fourteen points are mischievous under any in- 
terpretation. Most of them are worded in lan- 
guage so vague and so purely rhetorical that 
they may be construed with equal justice as 
having diametrically opposite meanings. Ger- 
many and Austria have eagerly approved these 
fourteen points; our own pro-Germans, paci- 
fists, socialists, anarchists, and professional in- 
ternationalists also approve them; but good 
citizens, who are also sound American nation- 
alists, will insist upon all of them being put 
into straightforward and definite language — 
and then will reject most of them. 

Under these conditions I do not know what 
action our government may now be secretly 
planning or what course it will follow even in 
the immediate future. But no matter what 



FOREWORD xi 

this action may be, the course of conduct advo- 
cated in this volume is in my judgment the 
only course that can with honor and safety be 
followed by the American people. Our present 
business is to fight, and to continue fighting 
until Germany is brought to her knees. Our 
next business will be to help guarantee the 
peace of justice for the world at large, and to 
set in order the affairs of our own household. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Sagamore Hill, November 6, 19 18. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER TAGE 

I. THE GREAT ADVENTURE i 

II. THE MEN WHO PAY WITH THEIR 

BODIES FOR THEIR SOULS' DESIRE 9 

III. THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S WAR; PUT IT 

THROUGH 31 

IV. THE SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICAN- 

ISM 39 

V. SOUND NATIONALISM AND SOUND 

INTERNATIONALISM 64 

VI. THE GERMAN HORROR 86 

VII. SERVICE AND SELF-RESPECT 93 

VIII. THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA AND THE 

BOLSHEVIST CHARYBDIS loi 

IX. PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 119 

X. TELL THE TRUTH AND SPEED UP 

THE WAR 129 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 143 

XII. THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 161 

APPENDICES: 

A. Acknowledgment 171 

B. Disposition of the Nobel Peace 

Prize Fund I73 

C. Put the Blame Where It Belongs 179 

D. The Terms of Peace; Speech on 

Lafayette Day 190 

E. Straight-out Americanism 197 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 



CHAPTER I 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

ONLY those are fit to live who do not 
fear fo die; and none are fit to die 
who have shrunk from the joy of life 
and the duty of Hfe. Both life and death are 
parts of the same Great Adventure. Never 
yet was worthy adventure worthily carried 
through by the man who put his personal 
safety first. Never yet was a country worth 
living in unless its sons and daughters were 
of that stern stuff which bade them die for it 
at need; and never yet was a country worth 
dying for unless its sons and daughters thought 
of life not as something concerned only with 
the selfish evanescence of the individual, but 
as a fink in the great chain of creation and 
causation, so that each person is seen in his 
true relations as an essential part of the whole, 
whose Hfe must be made to serve the larger 
and continuing life of the whole. Therefore 
it is that the man who is not willing to die, 
and the woman who is not willing to send her 



2 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

man to die, in a war for a great cause, are not 
worthy to live. Therefore it is that the man 
and woman who in peace-time fear or ignore 
the primary and vital duties and the high hap- 
piness of family Hfe, who dare not beget and 
bear and rear the Hfe that is to last when they 
are in their graves, have broken the chain of 
creation, and have shown that they are unfit 
for companionship with the souls ready for 
the Great Adventure. 

The wife of a fighting soldier at the front 
recently wrote as follows to the mother of a 
gallant boy, who at the front had fought in 
high air like an eagle, and, like an eagle, fight- 
ing had died : 

I write these few lines — not of condolence for 
who would dare to pity you ? — but of deepest sym- 
pathy to you and yours as you stand in the shadow 
which is the earthly side of those clouds of glory in 
which your son's life has just passed. Many will 
envy you that when the call to sacrifice came you 
were not found among the paupers to whom no 
gift of life worth offering had been entrusted. They 
are the ones to be pitied, not we whose dearest are 
jeoparding their lives unto the death in the high 
places of the field. I hope my two sons will live 
as worthily and die as greatly as yours. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 3 

There spoke one dauntless soul to another! 
America is safe while her daughters are of this 
kind; for their lovers and their sons cannot 
fail, as long as beside the hearthstones stand 
such wives and mothers. And we have many, 
many such women; and their men are Hke 
unto them. 

With all my heart I believe in the joy of 
living; but those who achieve it do not seek 
it as an end in itself, but as a seized and prized 
incident of hard work well done and of risk 
and danger never wantonly courted, but never 
shirked when duty commands that they be 
faced. And those who have earned joy, but 
are rewarded only with sorrow, must learn 
the stern comfort dear to great souls, the com- 
fort that springs from the knowledge taught 
in times of iron that the law of worthy living 
is not fulfilled by pleasure, but by service, 
and by sacrifice when only thereby can service 
be rendered. 

No nation can be great unless its sons and 
daughters have in them the quality to rise 
level to the needs of heroic days. Yet this 
heroic quality is but the apex of a pyramid of 
which the broad foundations must soHdly rest 



4 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

on the performance of duties so ordinary that 
to impatient minds they seem commonplace. 
No army was ever great unless its soldiers pos- 
sessed the fighting edge. But the finest natural 
fighting edge is utterly useless unless the sol- 
diers and the junior officers have been through 
months, and the officers of higher command 
and the general staff through years, of hard, 
weary, intensive training. So likewise the 
citizenship of any country is worthless unless 
in a crisis it shows the spirit of the two million 
Americans who in this mighty war have eagerly 
come forward to serve under the Banner of 
the Stars, afloat and ashore, and of the other 
millions who would now be beside them over- 
seas if the chance had been given them; and 
yet such spirit will in the long run avail nothing 
unless in the years of peace the average man 
and average woman of the duty-performing 
type realize that the highest of all duties, the 
one essential duty, is the duty of perpetuating 
the family life, based on the mutual love and 
respect of the one man and the one woman, 
and on their purpose to rear the healthy and 
fine-souled children whose coming into life 
means that the family and, therefore, the na- 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 5 

tion shall continue in life and shall not end 
in a sterile death. 

Woe to those who invite a sterile death; 
a death not for them only, but for the race; 
the death which is insured by a Hfe of sterile 
selfishness. 

But honor, highest honor, to those who fear- 
lessly face death for a good cause; no Hfe is 
so honorable or so fruitful as such a death. 
Unless men are willing to fight and die for 
great ideals, including love of country, ideals 
will vanish, and the world will become one 
huge sty of materialism. And unless the women 
of ideals bring forth the men who are ready 
thus to live and die, the world of the future 
will be filled by the spawn of the unfit. Alone 
of human beings the good and wise mother 
stands on a plane of equal honor with the 
bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down 
to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring 
back the children in whose hands rests the 
future of the years. But the mother, and far 
more the father, who flinch from the vital task 
earn the scorn visited on the soldier who flinches 
in battle. And the nation should by action 
mark its attitude alike toward t;he fighter in 



6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

war and toward the child-bearer in peace and 
war. The vital need of the nation is that its 
men and women of the future shall be the sons 
and daughters of the soldiers of the present. 
Excuse no man from going to war because he 
IS married; but put all unmarried men above 
a fixed age at the hardest and most dangerous 
tasks; and provide amply for the children 
of soldiers, so as to give their wives the as- 
surance of material safety. 
« In such a matter one can only speak in 
general terms. At this moment there are hun- 
dreds of thousands of gallant men eating out 
their hearts because the privilege of facing 
death in battle is denied them. So there are 
innumerable women and men whose unde- 
served misfortune it is that they have no chil- 
dren or but one child. These soldiers denied 
the perilous honor they seek, these men and 
women heart-hungry for the children of their 
longing dreams, are as worthy of honor as the 
men who are warriors in fact, as the women 
whose children are of flesh and blood. If the 
only son who is killed at the front has no brother 
because his parents coldly dreaded to play 
their part in the Great Adventure of Life, then 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 7 

our sorrow is not for them, but solely for the 
son who himself dared the Great Adventure 
of Death. If, however, he is the only son be- 
cause the Unseen Powers denied others to the 
love of his father and mother, then we mourn 
doubly with them because their darling went 
up to the sword of Azrael, because he drank 
the dark drink proffered by the Death Angel. 
In America to-day all our people are sum- 
moned to service and sacrifice. Pride is the 
portion only of those who know bitter sorrow 
or the foreboding of bitter sorrow. But all 
of us who give service, and stand ready for 
sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with 
the torches until we fall, content if we can 
then pass them to the hands of other runners. 
The torches whose flame is brightest are borne 
by the gallant men at the front, and by the 
gallant women whose husbands and lovers, 
whose sons and brothers are at the front. These 
men are high of soul, as they face their fate 
on the shell-shattered earth, or in the skies 
above or in the waters beneath; and no less 
high of soul are the women with torn hearts 
and shining eyes; the girls whose boy lovers 
have been struck down in their golden morning, 



8 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

and the mothers and wives to whom word has 
been brought that henceforth they must walk 
in the shadow. 

These are the torch-bearers; these are they 
who have dared the Great Adventure. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MEN WHO PAY WITH THEIR 

BODIES FOR THEIR SOULS' 

DESIRE 

IN a great war for the right the one great 
debt owed by the nation is that to the 
men who go to the front and pay with 
their bodies for the faith that is in them. At 
the front there are of course of necessity a few 
men who, from the nature of the case, are not 
in positions of great danger — as regards the 
staff and the high command, the burden of 
crushing responsibility borne by such men 
outweighs danger. But as a rule the men who 
do the great work for the nation are the men 
who, for a money payment infinitely less than 
what they would earn in civil life, face terrible 
risk and endure indescribable hardship and 
fatigue and misery at the front. These men 
include the air fighters, who run the greatest 
risk of all; and the fighting foot-sluggers, the in- 
fantry, — the "doughboys, — '' and the marines, 

9 



lo THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

and the machine-gun men, who take the ter- 
rible punishment when the tremendous thrusts 
are made; and the engineers and the men in 
the tanks and the men with the field-guns and 
the heavier guns, and the men who manage 
the gas — the work of all of whom is absolutely 
indispensable and who do it in hourly peril 
of their lives; and the doctors and stretcher- 
bearers who suffer the same dangers as the 
men to whom they bring succor; and the 
men who bring up the munition-trains — in 
short, all who under fire join in the exhausting 
and perilous labor which brings victory. These 
are the real heroes. These are the men who 
do the one great and indispensable task which 
entitles them forever to be honored by all true 
Americans. 

The rest of us behind the lines are merely 
supplementing their work. I have no patience 
with the well-meaning, silly persons who now 
and then announce that "saving will win the 
war" or that "money will win the war" or 
that "food will win the war." Let these good 
persons speak the truth and say that Liberty 
Bonds and Thrift Savings Stamps and the 
production of food and munitions and the 



THE MEN WHO PAY ii 

practice of economy and the work done through 
organizations like the Red Cross will all help 
to win the war and are indispensable. But the 
war will be won by the fighting men at the 
front! Every other activity in this nation is 
merely auxiliary to theirs. 

From General Pershing down the men of 
our army overseas have won for themselves 
deathless fame and have reflected the highest 
honor upon this nation. I know personally 
of division, brigade, and regimental commanders 
who, in addition to high valor, have shown an 
efficiency which puts them on a level with the 
very best men of their rank in any service in 
the world — I do not mention their names, merely 
because to do so would probably do an injustice 
to others equally good about whom I do not 
know. As for the battalion and company and 
platoon officers and non-commissioned officers 
and rank and file, I do not think it is untruthful 
or exaggerated to say that on the whole when 
our troops have finished their training they 
stand a Httle above the average of any other 
army in the world to-day. The seven or eight 
American divisions who did the murderous 
fighting in July and August during Foch's 



12 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

great counter-ofFensive established a record 
such as only the few very finest troops of any 
other army could equal, and which could not 
be surpassed. Probably in our own history 
nothing has ever quite come up to it, save in 
certain actions during the Civil War. The 
endurance, the valor, the efficiency, the fight- 
ing edge of these men could not be surpassed. 
Their losses correspond to their achievements. 
(In the infantry regiment in which two of my 
sons served, the colonel, the lieutenant-colonel, 
the three majors, and almost all the captains 
and Heutenants were killed or wounded; and 
the loss was proportionally almost as great 
among the enlisted men.) In addition to these 
divisions there were two or three times as many 
other divisions, across the seas or about to 
cross the seas, who were composed of as fine 
fighting material, and who by this time are 
probably as efficient, but who had not at that 
period been sufficiently trained to do the 
heaviest assault work. But they have been 
trained now; Pershing's army began its great 
thrust, as a separate army, about a year and 
a half after we entered the war. The actual 
management of our oversea army work is now 



THE MEN WHO PAY 13 

excellent; and the quality of our troops is 
really extraordinary. 

The noted French sociologist Gustave Le 
Bon writes me: 

My compatriots have discovered an America of 
which they had no idea. In addition to the hero- 
ism of her soldiers she has revealed aptitudes for 
scientific method and organization, the fruits of 
her education, which have awakened our admira- 
tion. Harbors, railroads, factories rise as if by 
magic. Every one asks how such men were trained 
and instructed. 

Our men include Americans from every 
section of the country and from every walk 
of life. The son of the railroad president and 
the son of the brakeman, the college graduate 
and the man who left a plough-tail at the end 
of the furrow, or threw down his pick and shovel 
or his ax and saw, all stand on the same plane, 
and do the same work and face and meet the 
same dangers. The son of the wealthy man 
who has been reared softly, and the son of the 
man who has every day eaten his bread in the 
sweat of his brow, look death in the eyes with 
the same stern courage and do their hard grind- 



14 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

ing work with the same grim efficiency. In 
the intervals of work they are Hght-hearted 
and they enjoy themselves greatly, snatching 
the pleasures with an added zest, because peril 
is so very near. Protestant and CathoHc, Jew 
and Gentile, men of old native American stock, 
and men whose parents were born abroad or 
who themselves were born abroad — no dis- 
tinction whatever can be made among them 
as they do their allotted tasks. 

The moods in which they have accomplished 
these tasks vary as widely as the tasks them- 
selves. But the work is well done, whether 
inspired by matter-of-fact acceptance of the 
fact that the United States is at war and that 
therefore it is up to the men of fighting age 
to do the fighting men's job; or by the exalted 
idealism of the young Galahad whose eyes are 
open to the shining visions shrouded from duller 
sight — and the young Galahads of this great 
war when they have found the grail have too 
often filled it with their own hearts' blood. 

Some have been driven by a sense of duty 
to do the best there was in them in a task for 
which they have no natural desire. Others 
eagerly welcome the chance to sweep straight 



THE MEN WHO PAY 15 

as a falcon at the quarry which may be death; 
and these may come back with broken wings; 
or they may never come back, and word may 
be brought to the women who weep that they 
must walk henceforth in the shadow. But 
all ahke have done their duty and more than 
their duty; and their souls shall stand forever 
in the glory of the morning; and all who dwell 
in this land now, or who shall dwell in it in 
the future, owe to them a debt that can never 
be cancelled. 

And the first instalment of payment on this 
debt should be paid by the government to the 
wives and children and dependent mothers left 
by the man who goes to the front. The wife 
who cheers him when he goes, and the children 
whom he leaves behind when he goes, should be 
amply provided for as a matter of mere justice. 
I believe that the state should in some way 
endow motherhood anyhow; but there can be 
no question of our duty toward the mother of 
the children whose father has left her and them 
to go to war. 

We are fighting for our dearest rights. We 
arc also fighting for the rights of all peoples, 



i6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

small or great, so long as they are well-behaved 
and do not wrong others, to enjoy their liberty 
and govern themselves in the forms they see 
fit to adopt. We intend to try to help others, 
but we know well that we cannot do so unless 
we are able to do justice within our own bor- 
ders, and to manage well the affairs of our 
own household. Therefore it behooves us, 
even now while we are bending all our energies 
to winning the great war, also to look to the 
future, and to begin to ponder the things that 
we must do to bring greater happiness and 
well-being and a higher standard of conduct 
and character within our own borders when 
once the war is through. 

Surely all of us — and especially those of us 
who stay at home and who are denied the op- 
portunity to go to the front — ought to realize 
the need in this country of a loftier idealism 
than we have had in the past; and the further 
and even greater need that we should in actual 
practice live up to the ideals we profess. The 
things of the body have a rightful place and a 
great place. But the things of the soul should 
have an even greater place. There has been 
in the past in this country far too much of 



THE MEN WHO PAY 17 

that gross materialism which, in the end, eats 
like an acid into all the finer qualities of our 
souls. 

The war came — our gross ideals were shat- 
tered and the scales fell from our eyes, and we 
saw things as they really were. Suddenly in 
the awful presence of death we grew to under- 
stand the true values of Hfe. We realized 
that only those men were fit to live who were 
not afraid to die; that although death was a 
terrible thing, yet that there were other things 
that were more terrible, other things that made 
life not worth living. All the finest of our 
young men, all those high of soul, responded 
eagerly to the call to arms ; the son of the rich 
man and the son of the poor man, side by side, 
neither claiming any favor except the chance 
to win honor and perform duty in the face of 
deadly peril. These men who have been going, 
and are going abroad by the million, are sacri- 
ficing everything for the sake of a great ideal. 
They have shown their willingness to sacrifice 
money and ease and pleasure, and life itself 
when duty calls, and the nation bids them go. 
Let us who are left behind in our turn strive to 
make our lives a little nearer the right ideal. 



i8 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Let us introduce into the work of peace some* 
thing of the spirit that they have introduced 
into the work of war. When these men come 
home, or at least when those of them who 
escape death come home, I beheve that they 
will demand, and I know that they ought to 
demand, a juster type of life, socially and in- 
dustrially, in this country. I believe, and I 
hope, that they will demand a loftier idealism 
in both our public and private affairs, and bet- 
ter and more common-sense methods of reduc- 
ing our ideals to practice and making them re- 
alizable. I believe that they will themselves 
show both idealism and also that common 
sense the lack of which insures disaster in 
peace as in war. I think they will insist upon 
a livelier sense of brotherhood and yet will no 
less insist upon the duty of recognizing lead- 
ership. Our aim must be to raise the level 
of the table-land of general opportunity and 
welfare without lowering the peaks of high 
achievement. Let the difference of reward be 
as great as that between our generals and 
admirals, such as Pershing and Sims, and the 
warrant officers or senior non-commissioned 
officers under them. But let there be a bet- 



THE MEN WHO PAY 19 

ter proportion than is now the case in indus- 
trial life, between the service rendered and the 
reward given. Gradually I hope to see the 
wage-worker become in a real sense a partner 
in the enterprise in which he works; and to 
achieve this end he must develop the power 
of self-control, the power of recognizing the 
rights of others no less than insisting upon 
his own; he must develop common sense; and 
that strength of character which cannot be 
conferred from without, and the lack of which 
renders everything else of no avail. Above 
all, I wish to see the farmers develop their 
strength by co-operation and in other ways, 
so that the elemental work of the soil will re- 
sume its ancient importance among us. 

At this moment we can only lay the founda- 
tion in outline; but there are certain things 
that we should do at once in connection with 
the war. One of them is to stop all profiteer- 
ing by capitalists; and another is to stop all 
slacking and loafing, whether by undividual 
workmen or as a result of union action. Of 
these two perhaps the profiteer is worse; but 
the slacker is almost as bad. As for the prof- 
iteer, any man who makes a fortune out of 



20 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

this war ought to be held up to derision and 
scorn. No man should come out of this war 
materially ahead of what he was when we went 
into it. There must be the reward for capital 
necessary in order to make it profitable to do 
the necessary work, and to cover the necessary 
risks; this is indispensable, and the government 
should see that neither demagogy nor igno- 
rance interferes with this necessary reward. 
But we heartily approve, as a war measure, 
of heavy progressive taxation of all profits, be- 
yond the reasonable profits necessary for the 
continuance of industry, and our governmental 
authorities would do well to see whether it is 
not possible tc put a tax on unused land. 
Most of our captains of finance are doing with 
all their energy necessary governmental work 
without any financial reward for themselves. 
I honor these men, I honor their sons who have 
gone to the war. But I have scant patience 
with the other men who treat the war merely 
as a chance for profit; and I have least patience 
with the rich men who keep their sons at 
home. I will not excuse the poor man from 
going to war; but I would mal^e it obligatory 
on the man who has much. As for the prof- 



THE MEN WHO PAY 21 

iteer, if I could get at him I would like to put 
him to digging the front trenches. And I 
would put beside him his brother in wrong- 
doing, the slacker or loafer, the man who 
Hmits the output, when it is necessary at this 
time that we should have the greatest possible 
production; and I would do this whether he 
was acting as an individual, or as an official 
or member of a labor union. Pershing's men 
are not limiting their output, and shame and 
disgrace should be the portion of any man who 
Hmits his output here at home. 

I believe that when this war is over we 
should prepare for our self-defense against 
other nations, and I believe that we should 
prepare for our own inner development. And 
in order to meet both needs, I believe in the 
principle of universal service. Of this military 
service is but a part. It is a vital part, and 
under no circumstances can we neglect it. But 
it is only a part. Universal suffrage can be 
justified only by universal service, service in 
peace and service in war. The man who will 
not render this service has no right to the vote. 
If he won't fight for the country in war and 
do his duty by the country in peace, we ought 



22 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

not to permit him to vote in the country. 
The conscientious objector who won't serve as 
a soldier or won*t pay his taxes has no place 
in a repubHc Hke ours, and should be expelled 
from it, for no man who won't pull his weight 
in the boat has a right in the boat. The So- 
ciety of Friends have come forward in this 
war just as gallantly as they came forward 
in the Civil War, and all true believers in peace 
will do well to follow their example. 

We now have an approach to the universal 
service which some of us have for many years 
been demanding. We now have all men from 
eighteen to forty-five required to serve their 
country, and required to register. Let us 
make this system permanent, and let us use 
it for the purposes of peace no less than for 
the purposes of war. Let us extend the prin- 
ciple to women no less than to men. Let us 
base suffrage on service. Let us demand the 
service from women as we do from men, and 
in return give the suffrage to all men and 
women who, in peace and war perform the ser- 
vice, and to no others. Base suffrage on ser- 
vice and not on sex. Treat it not as an un- 
earned privilege but as a duty which each of us 



THE MEN WHO PAY 23 

is to perform in a spirit of service to all of us 
and as a right which is not to be enjoyed un- 
less the person enjoying it does his or her full 
duty in peace and war. 

Universal training is a prerequisite for effi- 
cient universal service. It is just as much a 
prerequisite for efficient service in war as for 
efficient service in peace. It is just as much a 
prerequisite for women as for men. At this 
moment we have embodied in law the principle 
of universal military service for men, but inas- 
much as there has never been universal obliga- 
tory military training for the service, we now 
have to do all this training during the war it- 
self. In consequence we were not able to exert 
any considerable fraction of our man-power 
until over a year after we went to war; and 
over two years will have elapsed before the 
proportion of our strength thus actually usable 
and used will be anywhere near as great as the 
proportion of the French, English, or ItaHan 
strength thus used. This means that during 
the first year of the war we would have been 
absolutely helpless, and during the first year 
and a half almost helpless, against our antago- 
nists if we had not been protected by the 



24 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

armies and navies of our allies. In other 
words, while we were hardening our unpre- 
pared and helpless strength, and making it 
ready, we were saved from the strength and 
fury of our enemy only by the strength and 
valor of our allies. We now have universal 
military service. If four years ago we had had 
universal military training, so that the service 
would have been immediately efficient when 
called for, the war would have been over within 
ninety days from the time we entered it, and 
infinite bloodshed and treasure would have 
been spared. Next time we may not have 
allies to protect us ! And even if we do have 
allies, let us remember that our latent strength 
is such that if we prepare it in advance the 
chances are strong for our imposing an almost 
immediate peace in any conflict into which we 
are obliged to enter; whereas if we do not pre- 
pare it in advance we are doomed to impotence 
in any war unless we have allies who protect 
us during the year or two we spend in hurried 
and extravagant effort to do what we ought to 
have already done. 

am not advocating Prussian militarism. I 
am advocating the kind of democratic prepared- 



THE MEN WHO PAY 25 

ness which Switzerland has developed to her 
own great advantage socially and economically, 
and with the result of keeping war out of her 
borders. Let us profit by our own experience 
of the last year. Our training-camps have been 
universities of applied Americanism. For every 
young man between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty to have six months in such a camp, 
which would include, of course, some field ser- 
vice, would be of incalculable benefit to him, 
and of like benefit to the nation. It would 
teach him self-reliance, self-respect, mutuality 
of respect between himself and others, the 
power to command and the power to obey; it 
would teach him habits of cleanUness and 
order and the power of co-operation, and 
above all, devotion to the flag, the ideal of 
country. It would make him a soldier imme- 
diately fit for defensive work, and readily to 
be turned into a soldier fit for offensive work 
if, as in the present war, offense prove the only 
method of real defense. Every such man, 
after his experience in the camp, would tend 
to be a better citizen and would tend to do his 
own work for himself and his family better 
and with more efficient result. His experience 




i6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

would help him in material matters and at 
the same time would teach him to put certain 
great spiritual ideals in the foremost place 

Incidentally, we ought to change the 
rules, so far as giving any special privileges to 
the young fellows between eighteen and twenty 
in the matter of college training, to fit them to 
be officers. To say that the nation will pay 
for all of them to go to college is a deception, 
and to believe it \s a delusion. I do not beHeve 
in a selective draft for a favored class. I wish 
to see fair play for the workman's son who has 
not had the chance to learn so that he can go 
to college, but who has the natural ability to 
command and lead men. Only boys whose 
parents in the past have had the money to give 
them a special education can enter college at 
the present time, and it is unfair to the other 
boys to give these a special advantage. Let 
all go into the ranks together and after six 
months or a year of service let the best men be 
chosen out to enter the schools which will fit 
them to be officers. Of course, with the older 
men and at the beginning, we had to take those 
already available. But when we come to need 
the young fellows under twenty-one, let every 



THE MEN WHO PAY 27 

man enter the ranks and stand on a fair footing 
with every one else, and be given promotion 
on his merits. Hitherto the men who came in 
under twenty-one, came in as volunteers, and 
they were entitled to try for any position they 
could get; but now we have at last done what 
we ought to have done in the beginning. Now 
let them all stand aHke. 

Therefore, I hope that now we shall make the 
system of universal mihtary service and mili- 
tary training which we have introduced per- 
manent, although, of course, in modified form. 
But I would not stop here. I would use the 
registration of all our men as a basis for further 
development for training and service in the 
duties of peace. I would register the young 
women just as much as the young men. I 
would give them both certain fundamental 
forms of industrial training — training in the 
things that are fundamental in the ordinary 
work of the ordinary man and woman in their 
business occupations and in and around their 
home; in the things which it is good for every 
man and every woman to know. I mean cer- 
tain forms of manual labor and mechanical 
labor for men, and certain forms of household 



28 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

work and work outside of the house for women. 
The teaching in the schools should be only in 
EngHsh; in this country there is room for but 
one flag and for but one language. I believe in 
education. I believe in giving it free to every 
man and every woman, because I don't think 
we can have a successful democracy unless it is 
an educated one. I believe in making it obli- 
gatory so far as primary education is concerned, 
and I believe in making it possible for every 
man or woman who really desires it to have a 
higher education, but that this shall be per- 
missive and not obHgatory. Moreover, I be- 
lieve that the education shall be an education 
not only of the mind but also of the soul and 
the body. I think we should educate men 
and women toward and not away from what 
is to be their life-work — toward the home, 
toward the farm, toward the shop, and not 
away from them, I would use the introduc- 
tion of a system of universal training and ser- 
vice as a means for securing this education. 

I mention education only as one of the 
aims we ought to have in view in connection 
with universal training of our citizenship for 
service. There are very many lines of en- 



THE MEN WHO PAY 29 

deavor in such an effort of constructive states- 
manship; for construction and not destruction 
should be the key-note of our policy at this 
time. Our educational system should deal 
especially with all immigrants; and a peculiarly 
important branch of it at the present time 
ought to be the training of the disabled and 
the crippled returning soldiers, so that they 
may become, not objects of charity, but self- 
supporting citizens. We should develop the 
water-powers under the government, keeping 
ownership in the public, and preventing the 
pollution of interstate streams. We should 
begin at once to take thought for the soldiers 
when they return; to develop national employ- 
ment agencies for the redistribution of men 
after the war. We should enter on a course 
of taxation, purchase, and development of 
land so as to give to the returned soldier who 
is fit for it the chance to do the most vital of 
all works, to till the soil on the farm which 
he himself owns; and we can treat this as a 
stepping-stone to further study of and action 
concerning country life and farm production, 
so as to promote the growth and prosperity of 
the farmers who work hard on their own land. 







30 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

We must prepare our shipping for times of 
peace, and prepare to deal with the foreign- 
markets situation, as part of our programme 
of wise universal service; and, what is even 
more important, we must deal on a national 
scale with factory and industrial conditions; 
with city and country housing conditions; 
with child labor; and with old age, health 
and unemployment insurance for workers. 



CHAPTER III 

THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S WAR; 
PUT IT THROUGH 

THIS is the people's war. It is not the 
President's war. It is not Congress's 
war. It is America's war. We are in 
honor bound in conducting it to stand by 
every official who does well, and against every 
official who fails to do well. Any other atti- 
tude is servile and unworthy of an American 
freeman. 

In the papers ten months ago there ap- 
peared a brief statement made by an un- 
named young American major to his troops 
in the trenches in France. He said: 

We have reached the top in training. If you 
need anything come and tell me and I will get it 
for you if I can. If I do not get it I do not want 
to hear about it again, for it means that I cannot 
get it. We will have three meals a day if we can 
get them. If we have to miss one meal we will 
not be badly off, ?rnd if we miss two or three it will 
not be much worse. We are expected to work from 

31 



32 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

midnight of one day to midnight of the next day. 
If there is any chance to sleep between, all right. 
It will also be all right if there is no chance. Let 
everybody pitch in. While mud and water must 
be fought it may be much worse. The hopes of 
the Nation are fixed on each man. 

The ideal of duty thus set before our sol- 
diers, before the Americans who at this time 
risk most and suffer most, is substantially the 
ideal of duty toward which all of the rest of 
us here in America should, in our turn, like- 
wise strive. We must brace ourselves for effort 
and for endurance through a hard and danger- 
ous year. High of heart and with unfaltering 
soul, we must do our part in the grim work of 
toiling and fighting to bring a little nearer the 
day when there shall be orderly liberty through- 
out the world, and when justice and mercy and 
brotherly love shall obtain between man and 
man and among all the nations of mankind. 
We must show our faith by our works. We 
must prove our truth by our endeavor. We 
must scorn the baseness which uses high- 
sounding speech to cloak ignoble action, and 
which seeks to betray suffering right with the 
Judas kiss of a treacherous peace. 



THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S WAR 33 

Henceforth we at home will suffer some dis- 
comfort, a Httle unimportant privation and 
much wearing anxiety. What of it ? What 
we at home endure will be as nothing com- 
pared to that which is faced by the sons and 
brothers, by the husbands and fathers at the 
front; and what the fighting men of to-day 
face and bear will be no harder than what was 
faced and borne by Washington's troops at 
Valley Forge and Trenton, and by the sol- 
diers of Grant and Lee when they wrestled in 
the Wilderness. We inherit as free men this 
fair and mighty land only because our fathers 
and forefathers had iron in their blood. We 
can leave our heritage undiminished to those 
who come after us only if we in our turn show 
a resolute and rugged manliness in the dark 
days of trial that have come upon us. 

Let us all, individually and collectively, do 
our whole duty with brave hearts. Let us pay 
our taxes, subscribe to the government loans, 
work at our several tasks with all our strength, 
support all the agencies which take care of 
our troops and accept the stinting in fuel or 
food as part of the price we pay. Let our 
prime care be the welfare and warHke efficiency 



34 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

of the men at the front and in the training- 
camps. Let us hold to sharp account every 
pubhc servant who, in any way, comes short 
of his duty in this respect. But let us also 
insist that the soldiers at the front and in the 
camps treat every shortcoming merely as an 
obstacle to be overcome or remedied or offset 
by their own energy and courage and resource- 
fulness. The one absolute essential for our 
people is to insist that this war be seen through 
at no matter what cost, until it is crowned 
with the peace of overwhelming victory for 
the right. 

There are foolish persons who still say we 
ought to make peace now, a negotiated peace, 
and then be good friends with Germany. 
These persons with all the lessons of the last 
four years fresh in their minds still cling pa- 
thetically to the beHef that if only we will show 
that we are harmless Germany will begin to 
love us. 

As a matter of fact, the German hatred of 
America grew to be a positive obsession during 
the two and a half years of our ignoble and 
cold-blooded neutrality, when we submitted 
feebly to all the German wrong-doing. Let 



THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S WAR 35 

the foolish persons who doubt this read the 
books written by Mr. Gerard, our ambassador 
at BerHn, and the book written by Mr. Gibson, 
secretary of our legation at Brussels. Still 
better let them read the articles by Mr. Curtis 
Roth, until recently vice-consul at Plauen, 
Saxony. 

These writings show the extent of the hatred 
with which Germany regards America, a hatred 
which blossomed into full growth before we 
went to war, and which was immensely aggra- 
vated because of the contempt inspired by our 
tame submission to outrage for over two years. 
Mr. Roth's testimony is pecuHarly interesting. 
He shows that Berlin actively stimulated the 
campaign of hatred and revenge against Amer- 
ica, that the German people accepted the view 
that Americans were cowardly, avaricious, and 
effeminate, that they singled out for hatred 
the German-Americans beyond all other Ameri- 
can citizens, and that in Germany it was con- 
stantly announced that sooner or later there 
would be a day of reckoning when America 
would have to pay a huge indemnity or suffer 
the fate of Belgium. Mr. Roth shows that 
the German people think exactly as their lead- 



36 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

ers think and that they now hate and despise 
us Americans as they hate no others of their 
foes, not even the English. Says Mr. Roth: 
''They resolved to make our country drink to 
the depths out of the bitter cup of humiliation." 
Nothing do they find more despicable than our 
talk about peace, which they attributed to 
cowardice and flabbiness. They look on the 
American pacifist as a weakling and as a God- 
given tool in the hands of German interests. 

Ambassador Gerard reported the German 
state of mind again and again; in October, 
191 5, he specifically reported the Kaiser's threat 
to stand no nonsense from America, and exact 
full payment from her; but President Wilson 
kept the American people ignorant of the facts, 
and unprepared to defend their rights. In 
practice President Wilson holds to secret diplo- 
macy, to secretive and furtive diplomacy, with 
a tenacity as marked as the fluency with which 
in theory he champions its abolition. 

All Americans who were both thoroughly 
patriotic and well-informed lifted their heads 
with pride when at last this nation did what it 
would have been infinitely better to have done 
two years previously — ^when at last it went to 



THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S WAR 37 

war. There were well-meaning men who had 
been misled as to our duty, or who lacked 
vision, and who in consequence were even at 
that time against our going into the war. But 
the great majority of these men are now as 
patriotic as any one else; and all patriotic and 
far-sighted Americans must now sternly insist 
that the war be carried through to a completely 
victorious conclusion, at no matter what cost of 
blood and treasure, and no matter how long 
the time. All those who now ask for an inde- 
cisive peace, all who now assail our allies or 
directly or indirectly apologize for or give aid 
and comfort to Germany, all who do not insist 
upon the utmost speed and thorough efficiency 
in the conduct of the war, are false to America 
and false to all the liberty-loving nations of 
mankind. 

Germany respects only force. She rightly 
considers the sentimentality (I am not talking 
of sentiment) which clamors for peace without 
punishing her brutality and perfidy, as a mere 
cloak for cowardice and lazy weakness. Every 
man in this country who now advocates Ger- 
many's cause, whether directly or indirectly, 
or who demands a negotiated, inconclusive 



38 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

peace without victory, is not only treacherously 
false to this country, but is earning Germany's 
utter derision for himself and for our country 
in so far as it is influenced by him. Mr. Roth 
sums up by saying that "the average German 
hates this country to-day with a hatred far 
more venomous, far more implacable, far more 
unreasoning than the hatred he has visited 
upon any other people." Remember that this 
hatred has come upon us because for two years 
and a half we were neutral, because by failing 
to stand up for our own rights we lost the 
respect of Germany, because by our failing 
to prepare we incurred her utter contempt, 
because she despised and despises us for our 
weakness in dealing with the pro-Germans 
here at home. There is but one way to gain 
the respect of the Prussianized, miHtarist, and 
autocratic Germany of the Hohenzollerns, and 
that is by beating her to her knees. And in 
order to beat her as thoroughly and speedily 
as possible we should treat with drastic severity 
the Hun within our own gates. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 

THERE are two demands upon the spirit 
of Americanism, of nationalism. Each 
must be met. Each is essential. Each 
is vital, if we are to be a great and proud 
nation. 

The first is that we shall tolerate no kind 
of divided allegiance in this country. There 
is no room for the hyphen in our citizenship. 
There is no place for a 50-50 Americanism in 
the United States. He who is not with us, 
absolutely and without reserve of any kind, is 
against us, and should be treated as an alien 
enemy, to be interned or sent out of the coun- 
try. We have room in this country for but 
one flag, the Stars and Stripes, and we should 
tolerate no allegiance to any other flag, whether 
a foreign flag or the red flag or black flag. We 
have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the 
United States. We have room for but one 
language, the language of Washington and 

39 



40 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Lincoln, the language of the Declaration of 
Independence and the Gettysburg speech; the 
English language. English should be the only 
language used or taught in the primary schools, 
public or private; in higher schools of learning 
other modern languages should be taught, on 
an equahty with one another; but the language 
of use and instruction should be English. We 
should require by law that within a reasonable 
length of time, a time long enough to prevent 
needless hardship, every newspaper should be 
published in English. The language of the 
church and the Sunday-school should be Eng- 
lish. The government should provide night 
schools free for every immigrant who comes 
here, require him to attend them, and return 
him to his own country unless at the end of 
five years he has learned to speak and read 
English. This war has shown us in vivid and 
startling fashion the danger of allowing our 
people to separate along lines of racial origin 
and linguistic cleavage. We shall be guilty of 
criminal folly if we fail to insist on the com- 
plete and thoroughgoing unification of our 
people. 
The German-American Alliance and all simi- 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 41 

lar bodies, the Sinn Feiners, the East Side 
Russian revolutionary organizations, the Ger- 
manized Socialists, and most of the leaders of 
Mr. Townley's Non-Partisan League and the 
I. W. W. are anti-American to the core. In 
Everybody s Magazine for December last will 
be found extracts from German-American pa- 
pers, and from Sinn Fein and Yiddish pro- 
German papers which are as profoundly anti- 
American as if they were published in Berlin. 
It is true that parallel with them are given ex- 
tracts just as mischievous from certain papers 
printed in English, like the Hearst papers. 
Morally the latter are even more to blame 
than the former; but in their case the evil 
teaching is at any rate in a language which 
permits us to know about it, and to act about 
it if we choose; whereas the foreign-language 
papers work behind a veil which shuts them 
out from the sight of the average citizen. 

There is no permanent use in half-measures. 
It is silly to be lackadaisical over men of Ger- 
man origin having to fight the Germans of 
Prussianized Germany. Washington and most 
of his associates were of English origin; never- 
theless they fought the British King. If they 



42 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

had not done so we would not now be a nation. 
If the Americans of German blood do not now 
fight against Germany and feel against Ger- 
many as strongly as the rest of us they are not 
fit to be Americans at all. The deeds com- 
mitted by King George and his servants which 
led up to the Revolution were trivial compared 
to the hideous iniquities perpetrated upon us 
by the servants, tools, and agents of the Ho- 
henzollerns during the last four years. If peace 
should come to-morrow, nevertheless our bit- 
ter experience should teach us for a generation 
to watch keenly for German propaganda in 
this country, to treat with contemptuous scorn 
the Hearsts, Vierecks, and the Hke, and to 
crush under our heel every movement that 
smacks in the smallest degree of playing the 
German game. 

This is one of the demands to be made in 
the name of the spirit of American national- 
ism. The other is equally important. We 
must treat every good American of German 
or of any other origin, without regard to 
his creed, as on a full and exact equality with 
every other good American, and set our faces 
hke flint against the creatures who seek to 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 43 

discriminate against such an American, or to 
hold against him the birthplace of himself or 
his parents. The friends of whom I am proud- 
est and in whom I most believe include men 
like Loeb and Herman Hagedorn and Hans 
Zinser and Dolge, and the late George Meyer 
and August Vogel, and innumerable others, 
who are themselves in the army, or whose sons 
are in the army, and whose patriotism entitles 
them to fill any position from the presidency 
down. To discriminate in any way, because 
they are in whole or in part of German blood, 
against such men as these, who are typical 
Americans of the very best kind this country 
yields, is a base infamy from the personal 
standpoint, and from the public standpoint 
is utterly un-American and profoundly un- 
patriotic. Among the Americans who have 
won most honor at the front are very many of 
German blood. The battalions, companies, 
squadrons, and batteries which my sons com- 
mand, and have commanded, are full of such 
men. There is no better officer or more typical 
American in the entire American navy than 
my former White House aide, Osterhaus. I 
read how Lieutenant Edward Rickenbacher, 



44 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

the crack flier of our air service, attacked single- 
handed and destroyed two German airplanes, 
and then on his way back across our lines saw 
a fellow American flier, Lieutenant James A. 
Meissner, assailed by a German airplane while 
he was attacking another; and Rickenbacher 
brought down the latter, and the two Amer- 
icans returned in triumph. From their names 
I gather that the two men are at least in part 
of German blood (as I am myself). They have 
made all good Americans their debtors ! 

The other day I spoke at Springfield, Ohio, 
for speeding up the war until Germany was 
beaten to her knees. I was introduced by the 
President of Wittenberg College, a Lutheran 
college founded by Germans, but now straight- 
out American, just as much as Harvard, Yale, 
or Princeton, with two hundred of her sons in 
our army or navy. The invocation was by a 
CathoKc monsignor, a chaplain-major in the 
United States army, born in Germany; the 
benediction was by a Lutheran minister of 
German parentage. But we were all four of 
us Americans and nothing else, and we all 
preached the same straight-out doctrine of 
simon-pure Americanism — and in the same 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 45 

language, English. At Martinsville, Ind., I 
was introduced by Mayor Schmidt, whose two 
sons were in the army; one^was wounded and 
was in the same hospital with one of my sons. 
At Milwaukee, I was introduced by August 
Vogel; three of his sons were in the army, and 
the fourth was only waiting until he was eigh- 
teen. In one hospital on the cot next to another 
of my sons was another young officer, wounded 
also. He had shown exceptional gallantry; 
and when a Red Cross worker asked him his 
name he answered: "Say! Don't faint! My 
name is Von Holzendorf. Wouldn't the Huns 
feel gay if they knew they had almost got a 
man of that name?" The troops commanded 
by my sons have included at least as many 
men whose parents were born in foreign coun- 
tries — England and Ireland, Germany, France, 
Belgium, Italy, and the Scandinavian and 
Slavonic lands — as men whose parents were of 
old native American stock; some were Protes- 
tants, some Catholics, some Jews; and all did 
equally well, and all were Americans and noth- 
ing but Americans. 

I read in the press how the New York 
Liederkranz has established English as the 



46 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

official language of the club, and passed a 
resolution providing for the expulsion of any 
member of the club who is guilty directly or 
indirectly of an act or word hostile to the 
United States or its alUes. As its president 
said, the club is "loo per cent American"; 
and between one and two hundred of its mem- 
bers or their sons and nephews now wear the 
uniform of the United States army or navy. 

Indeed the club has thought of changing its 
name. This I hope will not be done. "Ger- 
man" should be left out of the name; but 
Liederkranz is just as good a name for a club 
as Knickerbocker, just as good a name as is 
William and Mary for a college; and I think 
it a mistake to lose the sense of historic con- 
tinuity by abandoning any such name, Vv^hich 
has grown to possess many American associa- 
tions. Moreover, the Liederkranz type of 
club is one which, when thoroughly Ameri- 
canized, and when Americans of all national 
origins are admitted freely into it, and when 
developed along our own lines, makes a dis- 
tinctly individual and most valuable contri- 
bution to American social life. 

So it is with the best type of "German- 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 47 

American" newspaper. Many of these papers 
have a fine and honorable record. At this 
moment such a paper as the New-Yorker 
Herold is doing capital work; and it was 
founded by a "forty-eighter" who stanchly 
upheld Lincoln and the cause of the Union 
and of Liberty. There is just one way by 
which to preserve in its usefulness such a paper, 
and that is to have it gradually change from 
German into English. If it continues German 
it will either die or cease to be useful to the 
country. For example, the Brooklyner Freie 
Presse has just suspended publication, be- 
cause, in spite of its patriotism, its patriotic 
readers grew to wish to read papers printed in 
the tongue of their fellow countrymen. It was 
founded by a German, a Union soldier; four 
of his grandsons are now in the mihtary ser- 
vice of the United States. The big press 
associations of the country should step in and 
patriotically offer their services for English 
editions of such papers if they will change from 
German to Enghsh. Every paper in a foreign 
language should be required to be published 
in English after a reasonable time; but many 
such papers are entirely loyal and have been 



48 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

very useful; and we should make every effort 
to enable them to continue as American news- 
papers, proud of their past, but changed as 
the changing times require, and henceforth 
printed in the language of the American people. 

When I was Governor of New York I was a 
member of the same Dutch Reformed church 
to which two and a half centuries earlier 
Governor Peter Stuyvesant had belonged; 
and we sat at communion at a long table in the 
aisle just as he and his associates had done. 
It was pleasant, indeed wise, to keep alive 
the tradition, the sense of historic continuity. 
But we used Enghsh, not Dutch, as our lan- 
guage; our minister had a Scotch name; one- 
half the congregation had English or other 
non-Dutch names. We were not exiled or 
transplanted Hollanders. We were Americans 
and nothing but Americans; we were at 
home in America, and only in America. 

Many politicians and many newspapers, 
actuated by varying motives, have upheld the 
theory of separate nationahties in America — 
a theory absolutely fatal to true American- 
ism. Recently the New York World was 
quoted as demanding the stopping of "the 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 49 

crusade against German language newspapers" 
on the ground that ''we need the true Germany 
in America to fight the false Germany in 
Europe." There could be no demand more 
mischievously unpatriotic and anti-American. 
It is precisely the demand which a far-seeing 
Ambassador BernstorfF would most warmly 
encourage. We do not need a "Germany in 
America," whether true or false, any more 
than we need an ''England in America," or 
an "Ireland in America," or any other nation- 
of-somewhere-else in America. To encourage 
"the true Germany in America" is to encour- 
age a separate nationality within our borders, 
which may at any time define "truth" and 
"falseness" in terms not of America but of 
Germany. No good citizen or true American 
will accept the World's position in this matter. 
We must resolutely refuse to permit our great 
nation, our great America, to be spHt into a 
score of Httle replicas of European nationalities, 
and to become a Balkan Peninsula on a larger 
scale. We are a nation, and not a hodge- 
podge of foreign nationalities. We are a 
people, and not a polyglot boarding-house. 
We must insist on a unified nationality, with 



50 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

one flag, one language, one set of national 
ideals. We must shun as we would shun the 
plague all efforts to make us separate in 
groups of separate nationalities. We must 
all of us be Americans, and nothing but Ameri- 
cans; and all good Americans must stand on 
an equality of consideration and respect, with- 
out regard to their creed or to the land from 
which their forebears came. 

Elsie Singmaster, whose writings, perhaps 
especially those dealing with the battle of 
Gettysburg, are sermons teaching what is best 
and simplest and loftiest in the American spirit, 
has written me a letter setting forth what I 
have to say better than I can do it myself. 

Gettysburg, Pa., June 3, 1918. 
My dear Colonel Roosevelt: 

I have been reading with pleasure an account of 
your timely address to the Germans of Milwaukee, 
and it occurred to me that you might be interested 
in the earliest piece of similar advice, which I en- 
close herewith. It is a great pity that there were 
so few early and later German Americans of Pas- 
torius's mind. 

Since 1914 I have taken pains to observe the 
attitude of the Pennsylvania Germans, and I be- 
lieve that the majority are as heartily in favor of 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 51 

this war as any other good Americans. A "foreign 
German" in a Pennsylvania German village has for 
generations been as much of an alien as an Italian 
or a Spaniard and has had less in common with the 
inhabitants. 

Last month I spoke each evening in some little 
church or school house of our county for our local 
Red Cross organization, and I am beginning to feel 
that we are a nation aroused. To drive miles on 
a mountain road which seems to be really a creek 
bed, to speak to a handful of people, to be listened 
to with attention which not even the calling of the 
whip-poor-wills outside or the wailing of the babies 
within can affect in the least, and then to watch 
an old man, poor in worldly goods, but rich in pa- 
triotism, rise to give the first five or ten dollars 
of a generous donation because he "went out in '61 
and stayed till the end and wants to help the boys 
now" — there is an experience to be remembered 
always. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Elsie Singmaster Lewars. 

The letter of Pastorius to his children, written 
in 1695, runs in part as follows: the advice 
was sound then (at the time when certain of 
my own forebears who were German or **high 
Dutch" were helping found Germantown), 
and it is even sounder now, when the oppor- 



52 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

tunity is to become not English colonists but 
American citizens. 



Dear Children: John, Samuel and Henry Pas- 
torius: Though you are {Germano sanguine nati) 
of high Dutch parents, yet remember that your 
father was Naturalized, and ye born in an English 
colony, Consequently each of you Anglus Natus 
an EngHshmen by Birth. Therefore it would be 
a shame for you if you should be ignorant of the 
English tongue, the tongue of your Countrymen; 
but that you may learn the better I have left a 
Book for you both, and commend the same to your 
reiterated perusal. If you should not get much 
of the Latin, nevertheless read ye the English part 
oftentimes OVER AND OVER AND OVER. 
For the drippings of the house-eaves in time make 
a hole in a hard stone. 

Treat all Americans as on the same footing; 
and let no man live permanently in this coun- 
try unless he is an American and nothing but 
an American. 

We are the fellow countrymen of Washing- 
ton and Lincoln, of Lighthorse Harry Lee and 
his great son, of Grant and Sherman and Far- 
ragut, of Marion and Paul Revere and Schuy- 
ler, of Washington's General Sullivan and 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 53 

Lincoln's General Sheridan. These men were 
of diverse ancestry; their forefathers came 
from England or Ireland or Scotland or Hol- 
land or France or Spain. But they were Amer- 
icans, and nothing else; and if we are really 
to be loyal to their spirit, we, in our day, must 
be Americans, and nothing else. And, above 
all, we must be Americans, and only Americans, 
in the face of any and every foreign foe. 

We are also, and just as much, the fellow 
countrymen of Muhlenberg and Custer. There 
is no more typically American figure in the 
Revolutionary War than that of Muhlenberg, 
the American of pure German blood, the pastor 
of a Lutheran church at the outbreak of the 
Revolution. On the Sunday after the call 
for arms came he mounted his pulpit; he ad- 
monished his flock that there was a time for 
prayer and a time for battle, and that the time 
for battle had come. Casting aside his frock, 
he appeared in the uniform of a colonel of the 
Continental Army; and on many a stricken 
field he proved his valor and devotion. Custer, 
a man of German descent, was one of the most 
gallant and heroic figures of the Civil War 
and the Indian Wars; his name and career 



54 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

made up one of the finest traditions of our 
army. In the Civil War there fought many, 
many men of German birth; Sigel, Oster- 
haus, Hentzleman; innumerable others. They 
proved their Americanism by their deeds. 
Their grandsons are in our armies and navy 
to-day. Their undivided loyalty is given to 
one flag, to our flag. They are incapable of 
a loyalty diff'erent from that of their fellow 
Americans of diff'erent blood. These fellow 
Americans of theirs who happen to be of dif- 
ferent blood must in their turn see to it that 
any one who discriminates against these men 
because they are of German blood is himself 
branded as a traitor. 

I speak as an American who has German 
blood in his veins. I speak on behalf of all 
loyal Americans who are, in whole or in part, 
of German blood. Our devotion knows no 
other country but this. With all our hearts 
we are against Germany to-day exactly as 
the loyal Americans of English descent who 
followed Washington were against England 
in their day. We feel it incumbent on us to 
be, if anything, a little more ready to follow 
the call of America against Germany precisely 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 55 

because of our blood. Our hearts burn with 
wrath over the horrible brutality, cruelty, and 
treachery of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns. 
We abhor, and would punish with relentless 
sternness, the American traitors of German 
blood who in this crisis are false to America, 
or hostile to the Allies of America, or who in 
any way or shape serve Germany. And there- 
fore we feel the keenest indignation against 
all men who in any way seek to discriminate 
against us because of the land from which our 
forefathers came. We do not beg as a favor, 
we challenge as a right, full equality of respect 
and of treatment for all our fellow Ameri- 
cans. 

I have just received a letter from one of the 
very best Americans I know, a Congregational 
clergyman, Frazer Metzger, a man whose father 
and mother both were born in Germany. He 
was an exceptionally high-minded and useful 
citizen in time of peace. Since this war began 
his soul has flamed with anger against the ruth- 
less wickedness of Germany; and he has led 
with fiery ardor in every patriotic movement 
to strengthen America's hands and to exalt 
her soul so that she may accept no peace with- 



56 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

out overwhelming victory. Yet mean-souled 
creatures have assailed this man because he 
is of German blood. He writes me: 

This distrust is putting fear into the hearts of 
some of us, which fear is not personal but national. 
I understand that Washington looks upon Goethals 
as pro-German, and I can't believe it. Take my 
own case. Since the outbreak of the war, I have 
devoted practically all my time and spent all my 
little savings for America and against the inde- 
scribable menace of German dominance. Yet I 
find myself laid open to the suspicion of being pro- 
German, charged with hiding my German pro- 
clivities behind a blatant and insincere loyalty, 
merely because I am of German descent. 

The people who thus assail a high-minded 
American because he is of German blood are 
as base as if they slandered the memories of 
Nathan Hale and his New England comrades 
of the Revolution because they were of Eng- 
lish blood. The finest Americans in our land 
to-day are the Americans of German blood 
whose whole-hearted loyalty is given to this 
RepubHc as against all her foes. One of the 
ablest and most gallant men in our army, born 
in Germany, recently wrote me: "Your coun- 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 57 

try is my country, and my country is your 
country, and there is no other country for either 
of us." There spoke the true American ! How 
can we sufficiently express our scorn of those 
who would in any way discriminate against 
such Americans ? 

The persons who attempt such discrimina- 
tion are themselves utterly unpatriotic. By 
their actions they inflict a cruel wrong on their 
fellow countrymen. Moreover, they do their 
best to drive these same fellow countrymen 
away from their loyalty. There are plenty 
of men of German blood who are disloyal; 
and there are plenty of men of Irish and Jewish 
and native- American blood who are disloyal — 
indeed, the most influential leaders of dis- 
loyalty in this country have been of old native 
stock. Punish every disloyal man; but punish 
him because he is disloyal, not because of his 
blood. The government ought at once to 
establish martial law wherever there are out- 
rages against person or property b}^ German 
spies or by pro-German American sympathizers, 
or by Irishmen whose hatred of England makes 
them disloyal to America, or by I. W. W. people, 
or by any other enemies of our country. The 



58 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

government ought to visit all such offenders 
with the full severity of military law. The 
time for shilly-shallying is long past. Any 
newspaper, whether published in German or 
in English, which directly or indirectly supports 
traitorou,s action should be promptly sup- 
pressed. But the great mass of Americans who 
are wholly or partly of German blood are ex- 
actly as loyal as Americans of any other blood; 
and it is a foul wrong not to treat all exactly 
alike. 

I am well aware that the trouble is mainly 
due to the action of the openly or covertly 
disloyal German-Americans and of the openly 
or covertly disloyal German-American press, 
and of the Irish-Americans who are the paid 
or unpaid agents of Germany, and of the na- 
tive American politicians and editors who have 
pandered to the disloyal foreign vote. Among 
all these paid or unpaid agents of Germany, 
the disloyal men of German origin have been 
the most evil enemies of the entirely [oyal mass 
of American citizens of German origin; and 
this should be recognized by all loyal citi- 
zens. 

The disloyal man, whether his disloyalty 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 59 

is open or disguised, is our worst foe; but close 
behind him comes the man who, whether from 
wickedness or foolishness, assails his loyal fel- 
low citizens because of the blood that flows in 
their veins. 

Indeed, this war against the brutal militaristic 
and capitalistic tyranny of Germany is, in a 
sense, pecuHarly the war of all true Americans 
of German blood, exactly as the war of the 
Revolution was, in a sense, pecuHarly the war 
of all true Americans of EngHsh blood. It 
should mark the rebirth of our nation; of a 
nation dedicated to orderly freedom and to 
the cause of justice for all men. We are a new 
people; we differ from all other peoples; we 
are neither EngHsh nor Irish, neither German 
nor French; we are Americans, and only Amer- 
icans. We are bound to treat all other nations 
on their conduct, and only on their conduct, 
in each crisis as it arises. 

Above all, we are bound to treat all our 
fellow Americans with reference solely to their 
whole-hearted loyalty to American ideals as 
embodied in the great Americans whose names 
I have used above. True Americans who are 
in whole or in part of Germany blood claim 



6o THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

nothing except the right to serve America and 
to be judged according to their service. 

Just what and who the American fighting 
man — and therefore the best American — is 
when at his best, may be seen in the following 
poem by Mr. James W. Foley. Many years 
ago, in the cow country, on the Little Missouri, 
Mr. Foley's father was a valued friend and 
neighbor of mine; and the poet himself was 
the "Foley's boy" of the Ann Arbor Professor 
incident, recorded on page 426 of my ''Wilder- 
ness Hunter." The poem runs as follows: 

YANKS 

O'Leary, from Chicago, and a first-class fightin' 

man, 
For his father was from Kerry, where the gentle 

art began: 
Sergeant Dennis P. O'Leary, from somewhere on 

Archie Road, 
Dodgin' shells and smellin' powder while the battle 

ebbed and flowed. 

And the captain says: "OTeary, from your fight- 
in' company 

Pick a dozen fightin' Yankees and come skirmishin' 
with me; 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 6i 

Pick a dozen fightin' devils, and I know it's you 

who can.*' 
And O'Leary, he saluted like a first-class fightin' 

man. 

O'Leary's eye was piercin' and O'Leary's voice 

was clear: 
"Dimitri Georgoupoulos !" And Dimitri answered 

"Here!" 
Then "Vladimir Slaminsky! Step three paces 

to the front, 
For we're wantin' you to join us in a little Heinie 

hunt!" 

"Garibaldi Ravioli!" Garibaldi was to share; 
And "Ole Axel Kettleson!" and "Thomas Scalp- 

the-Bear!" 
Who was Choctaw by inheritance, bred in the blood 

and bones, 
But set down in army records by the name of 

Thomas Jones. 

"Van Winkle Schuyler Stuyvesant!" Van Winkle 

was a bud 
From the ancient tree of Stuyvesant and had it in 

his blood; 
"Don Miguel de Colombo!" Don Miguel's next 

kin 
Were across the Rio Grande when Don Miguel 

went in. 



62 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

"Ulysses Grant O'Sheridan!" Ulysses' sire, you 
see, 

Had been at Appomattox near the famous apple- 
tree; 

And "Patrick Michael Casey!'* Patrick Michael, 
you can tell. 

Was a fightin' man by nature with three fightin' 
names as well, 

"Joe Wheeler Lee!" And Joseph had a pair of 

fightin' eyes; 
And his granddad was a Johnny, as perhaps you 

might surmise; 
Then "Robert Bruce MacPherson!" And the 

Yankee squad was done 
With "Isaac Abie Cohen!" once a lightweight 

champion. 

Then O'Leary paced 'em forward and, says he: 

"You Yanks, fall in!" 
And he marched 'em to the captain. "Let the 

skirmishin' begin. 
Says he, "The Yanks are comin', and you beat 

'em if you can ! " 
And saluted like a soldier and first-class fightin' 

man I 

By rights this skirmish squad should have 
included a couple of men of German parentage, 
and two or three others whose ancestors came 



SQUARE DEAL IN AMERICANISM 63 

over in the Mayflower; and then it would 
have been an accurate cross-section of the 
American people. This war has been the real 
crucible, the functioning crucible for our na- 
tion; and now no matter what our ancestry, 
all of us who are Americans at all are Amer- 
icans and nothing else. 



CHAPTER V 

SOUND NATIONALISM AND SOUND 
INTERNATIONALISM 

THE tremendous thrust of the Allies 
during the last three months, in which 
the hard-fighting soldiers of the Amer- 
ican army have borne so distinguished and 
honorable a part, has meant grave military 
disaster to Germany. Therefore it has resulted 
in a renewal of the German peace offensive. 
No man can prophesy in these matters; but 
the Germans may yet continue the war for a 
long time; and therefore we should prepare to 
have in France an army of four million fight- 
ing men (not including non-combatants) for 
the battle front next spring. But the Germans 
seem likely to try to make peace instead of 
continuing the war and are apparently seeking 
to cover their retention of some of their ill- 
gotten substantial gains by nominal and theo- 
retical support of some ghttering proposal 
about a league of nations to end all war. The3^ 

64 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 65 

thereby hope to keep part of their booty by 
appealing to what is vaguely called interna- 
tionalism, and getting the support not only of 
sentimentalists who do not like to look un- 
pleasant facts in the face, but also of the good 
people who are appalled and puzzled and panic- 
stricken by the horror Germany has brought on 
the world, and who, instead of bracing them- 
selves to put down this horror by their own 
hardened strength and iron will, clutch at any 
quack remedy which false prophets hold out 
as offering a substitute for such action. 

Therefore it is well at this time for sober 
and resolute men and women to apply that 
excellent variety of wisdom colloquially known 
as "horse-sense'* to the problems of national- 
ism and internationalism. These problems 
will not be solved by rhetoric. Least of all 
will they be solved by competitive rhetoric. 
Masters of phrasemaking may win immense, 
although evanescent, applause by outvying 
one another in words that glitter, but these 
glittering words will not have one shred of 
lasting effect on the outcome except in so far 
as they may have a very mischievous effect 
if they persuade good, ignorant people to aban- 



66 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

don the possible real good in the fantastic effort 
to achieve an impossible unreal perfection. Let 
honest men and women remember that this kind 
of phrasemongering does not represent idealism. 
The only idealism worth considering in the 
workaday business of this world is applied 
ideaHsm. This is merely another way of say- 
ing that permanent good to humanity is most 
apt to come from actually trying to reduce 
ideals to practice, and this means that the 
ideals must be substantially or at least measur- 
ably realizable. 

The professed internationalist usually sneers 
at nationaHsm, at patriotism, and at what we 
call Americanism. He bids us forswear our 
love of country in the name of love of the 
world at large. We nationalists answer that 
he has begun at the wrong end; we say that, 
as the world now is, it is only the man who 
ardently loves his country first who in actual 
practice can help any other country at all. 
The internationalist bids us to promise to 
abandon the idea of keeping America perma- 
nently ready to defend her rights by her 
strength and to trust, instead, to scraps of 
paper, to written agreements by which all 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM e^ 

nations form a league, and agree to disarm, 
and agree each to treat all other nations, big 
or little, on an exact equality. We national- 
ists answer that we are ready to join any 
league to enforce peace or similar organization 
which offers a Hkelihood of in some measure 
lessening the number and the area of future 
wars, but only on condition that in the first 
place we do not promise what will not or ought 
not to be performed, or be guilty of proclaim- 
ing a sham, and that in the second place we 
do not surrender our right and duty to prepare 
our own strength for our own defense instead 
of trusting to the above-mentioned scraps of 
paper. In justification we point to certain 
very obvious facts which ought to be patent 
to every man of common sense. 

Any such league of nations must, of course, 
include the nine nations which have the great- 
est military strength, or it will be utterly im- 
potent. These nine nations include Germany, 
Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The first three 
have abundantly shown during the last four 
years that no written or other promise of the 
most binding kind has even the sHghtest effect 
upon their actions. The fourth, Russia, un- 



68 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

der the lead and dominion of the Bolsheviki, 
has just been guilty of the grossest possible 
betrayal of her Allies and of the small kindred 
Slavonic peoples and of world democracy. 
This betrayal was in the interest of a military 
and despotic autocracy and included the di- 
rect violation of Russia's plighted faith. Un- 
der such conditions it is unnecessary to say 
that at present Russia's signature to a league 
to enforce peace will not be worth the paper 
on which it is written. Therefore the creation 
of any such league for the future will simply 
mean a pledge by the present Allies to make 
their alliance perpetual, and all to go to war 
again whenever one of them is attacked. 
This may become necessary, but it certainly 
does not imply future disarmament. And if 
the administration really means loyal adherence 
to a league of nations, or a league to enforce 
peace in the future, it must at once confess 
and atone for its shameful betrayal of the exist- 
ing league of Allies by its failure to declare 
war on Turkey and Bulgaria. 

Nor is this all. The United States must 
come into court with clean hands. She must 
not pledge herself without reservation to the 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 69 

right of ''self-determination" for each people 
while she has behaved toward Haiti and San 
Domingo as she is now behaving. It is not 
possible for me to say whether our action in 
these two cases has been right or wrong, be- 
cause the administration, with its usual horror 
of publicity, whether pitiless or otherwise, 
and its inveterate predilection for secret and 
furtive diplomacy, has kept most of the facts 
hidden. I beheve that there was no possible 
excuse for such secret diplomacy in these cases 
and that the same course should have been 
followed as was followed in the case of the 
Panama Revolution, where every fact was im- 
mediately laid without reservation before Con- 
gress (and where, incidentally, what this coun- 
try did was merely to give Panama the "right 
of self-determination " of which we have robbed 
Haiti and San Domingo). But even if I am 
wrong in my belief in the general principle 
of open diplomacy, and even if the adminis- 
tration is right in its consistent policy of secret 
diplomacy as regards the mass of questions 
which I think ought to be made pubHc, the 
fact remains that we have with armed force 
invaded, made war upon, and conquered the 



70 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

two small republics, have upset their govern- 
ments, have denied them the right of self-de- 
termination, and have made democracy within 
their limits not merely unsafp but non-existent. 
As we have no pubHshed facts to go on, I can- 
not say whether their misconduct did or did 
not warrant such drastic action on our part. 
But on the assumption that the administration 
acted properly, we are committed to the prin- 
ciple that some nations are not fit for self- 
determination, that democracy within their 
limits is a sham, and that their offenses against 
justice and right are such as to render inter- 
ference by their more powerful and more civil- 
ized neighbors imperative. I do not doubt 
that this principle is true in some cases, whether 
or not it ought to be appHed in these two par- 
ticular cases. In any event our continuing 
action in San Domingo and Haiti makes it 
hypocritical for us to lay down any universal 
rules about self-determination for all nations. 
Moreover, our destruction of democracy in 
these two little repubHcs, whether justifiable 
or not, makes it hypocritical of the adminis- 
tration to profess that it purposes to **make 
democracy safe" throughout the world. 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 71 

Our action also shows how utterly futile it 
would be to try to treat a league to enforce 
peace as a substitute for training our own 
strength for our own defense. Let China be 
the witness of the truth of this statement. 
China has actually realized the ideal of the 
pacifists who insist that unpreparedness for 
war secures peace. The ideal of the interna- 
tionalists is that patriotism and the sense of 
nationaHsm are detrimental to humanity, and 
the ideal of the socialists is that the capitalist 
regime is the only cause of popular misery.' 
China is helpless to attack others or defend 
herself, her people have little sense of national 
unity and pride, and there are in China huge 
districts where there are no capitalists, and 
where the misery of the people is greater than 
in any country of the Occident. China's 
helplessness, instead of helping toward world 
peace, has been a positive encouragement to 
war and violence among her neighbors. Her 
future depends primarily not on herself but 
on what her neighbors choose to do. In spite 
of her size and her enormous population and 
resources she is helpless to do good to others 
because she is powerless to prevent others from 



72 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

doing evil to her. Her agreement to a league 
of nations or to a league to enforce peace would 
be worthless because she is unable to put 
strength back of justice either for herself or 
for any one else. The pacifists and internation- 
alists, if they had their way, would turn the 
United States into the China of the Occident. 

Let us put our trust neither in rhetoric nor 
hypocrisy, whether conscious or unconscious. 
Let us be honest with ourselves. Let us look 
the truth in the face. Let us remember what 
Germany, Austria, and Turkey have actually 
done. Let us remember what Russia has suf- 
fered from Germany and the worse than folly 
with which she has behaved to every one else. 
Let us remember what has happened to China, 
and what we have made happen to Haiti and 
San Domingo. Then let us trust for our sal- 
vation to a sound and intense American na- 
tionalism. 

The horse-sense of the matter is that all 
agreements to further the cause of sound in- 
ternationalism must be based on recognition 
of the fact that, as the world is actually consti- 
tuted, our present prime need is this sound and 
intense American nationalism. The first essen- 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 73 

tial of this sound nationalism is that the nation 
shall trust to its own fully prepared strength 
for its own defense. So far as possible, its 
strength must also be used to secure justice 
for others and must never be used to wrong 
others. But unless we possess and prepare the 
strength, we can neither help ourselves nor 
others. Let us by all means go into any wise 
league or covenant among nations to abolish 
neutrality (for of course a league to enforce 
peace is merely another name for a league to 
abolish neutrality in every possible war). But 
let us first understand what we are promising, 
and count the cost and determine to keep our 
promises. Above all, let us treat any such 
agreement or covenant as a mere addition or 
supplement to and never as a substitute for 
the preparation in advance of our own armed 
power. Next time that we behave with the 
ignoble folly we have shown during the last 
four years we may not find alHes to do what 
France and England and Italy have done for 
us. They have protected us with their navies 
and armies, their blood and their treasure, 
while we first refused to do anything and then 
slowly and reluctantly began to harden and 



74 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

make ready our giant but soft and lazy 
strength. 

No paper scheme designed to secure peace 
without effort and safety without service and 
sacrifice will either make this country safe or 
enable it to do its international duty toward 
others. 

An American citizen, personally unknown to 
me, writes me that his three sons entered the 
army at the outbreak of the war and that 
one of them, an aviator, was killed in battle at 
the front just two weeks before my own son 
was killed as he fought in the air. In his 
letter my correspondent adds: 

Would that my country might learn and never 
forget that not only the winning of peace now, but 
the maintenance of peace at all times depends not 
fundamentally on treaties or leagues of nations, 
but on the readiness of citizens to fly to the aid of 
the wronged and to give their lives if need be that 
justice may be secured. 

There speaks the true American spirit which 
holds fast ahke to fearlessness and to wisdom, 
to gentleness and to iron resolution. There 
speaks the spirit of that fervent nationalism 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 75 

which would forbid America either to inflict 
or to endure wrong. 

The cult of absolute internationalism as a 
substitute jot nationalism is the cult of a doc- 
trine of fatal sterility. It had much vogue 
up to the beginning of this war among the 
professional ** intellectuals/' especially among 
bright, clever young college men of superficial 
cultivation. It was of real damage to these, 
and therefore it, to a certain extent, damaged 
the country; for it inevitably emasculates its 
sincere votaries, and therefore deprives their 
country of whatever aid they could otherwise 
give in the effort to build a vigorous civiliza- 
tion, based, as every civilization worth calHng 
such must be, on a spirit of intense national- 
ism. 

The damage done, because of the way such 
sham internationalism destroys the creative 
fibre of the intellectuals, is chiefly of negative 
character. It deprives the nation of a growth- 
force which ought to be a valuable asset. But 
it works in positively mischievous fashion 
among the powerful sinister men who are not 
sincere devotees of the cult, but who use it as 
a cloak behind which they war on all civiliza- 



^(^ THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

tion, or else deliberately adopt a pretense of 
belief in it in order to weaken other nations 
and make them an easier prey. The Russian 
Bolshevists embody the jfirst of these attitudes. 
The German Socialists embody the second. 
In the United States the I. W. W. and all 
anarchists of that stamp take essentially the 
position of the Russian Bolshevists; while the 
American Socialist party, which is a mere 
annex of Germany, follows the lead of the 
German SociaHsts. 

There are a few high-minded Socialists in 
America who have refused to bow the knee to 
Baal, who denounce the German Socialists, and 
uphold the great war for human freedom 
against Germany. But they are very, very 
few. They have been contemptuously thrust 
aside by the Socialist party organization. Un- 
der the actual conditions their continued asser- 
tion of their belief in "internationaHsm" has a 
merely pathetic significance. 

The great majority of the Socialist, Bolshe- 
vist, and other big organizations which before 
the war had most loudly declared their alle- 
giance to "internationalism," have during the 
last four years sinned against international fair 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM ^^ 

dealing and justice more heavily than any 
other groups of men in the world, save only 
the Prussianized people of Germany and the 
rulers of Turkey. If sound internationalism 
means anything it means insisting upon justice 
between nations and condemning wrong done 
by one nation to another. But the German 
Socialists, who had loudly preached "inter- 
nationalism," have eagerly supported the Ger- 
man autocracy in its course of international 
robbery and murder, and have cynically an- 
nounced that they only preached pacifism to 
other nations in order to make them the easier 
victims of German militarism; the Socialist 
David announcing in the Reichstag: "Ger- 
many must squeeze her enemies with a pair of 
pinchers, the military pincher and the pacifist 
pincher. The German armies must continue to 
fight vigorously while the German Socialists 
encourage and stimulate pacifism among Ger- 
many's enemies." This was the real result of 
professional internationalism in Germany — a 
resolute attempt to convert all free nations into 
the vassals of Germany. Meanwhile, in Amer- 
ica, in France, in England, and in Italy, either 
the majority or else a large minority of the 



78 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

avowed "international" Socialists, were put- 
ting a premium on Germany's crimes against 
international justice by refusing to condemn 
them, by clamoring against war with Germany, 
and by clamoring for a peace which would 
leave Germany unpunished. Then in Russia 
the extreme professional internationalists, the 
Bolshevists, got control. They instantly be- 
trayed the cause of international right and jus- 
tice, behaving with a venal contempt of decency 
which makes the Holy AlHance of the sovereigns 
who overthrew Napoleon seem respectable by 
comparison. They greedily sold themselves 
and their country for German gold, they aided 
the German propaganda, they deserted their 
allies, the free nations, they tore Russia in 
pieces, they butchered their fellow countrymen 
by tens of thousands. They have done all in 
their power to fasten the German yoke on the 
whole world, and they have done it in the 
name of "internationalism"! 

This is what happened in actual practice as 
soon as the "international" parties began to 
apply the "internationalism" they had so 
vehemently preached. The visionaries and en- 
thusiasts among the internationalist leaders 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 79 

have been merely the tools of two sets of evil 
beings; the brutish creatures who wished to 
destroy all government, and especially all good 
government, because they are themselves fit 
only for the slime of the pit and hate the light 
and all who dwell in the light; and the astute 
sordid creatures who serve their own self- 
interest by serving Germany, whether for 
downright pay or for other considerations, and 
who find that the easiest way to render such 
service is to weaken their own countries, and 
to debase civilization, by breaking down the 
spirit of patriotism and nationalism under pre- 
tense of supporting internationaHsm. 

When these are the fruits of appHed inter- 
nationaHsm, how is it possible for any high- 
minded man, of reasonably good mind and 
reasonably sound training, to be misled by the 
false and diseased philosophy which has pro- 
duced them ? InternationaHsm seems an allur- 
ing pose to many a clever young college fellow. 
But it is a pose which, if persevered in, means 
that the man loses all power of aiding in the 
development of a really vigorous and therefore 
a really national civilization. 

Fundamentally, as the world now is, promis- 



8o THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

cuity in patriotism is as unwholesome as pro- 
miscuity in domestic relations. The best world- 
citizen is the man who is first and foremost a 
good citizen of his own country. Within our 
national limits I distrust any man who is as 
fond of a stranger as he is of his own family; 
and in international matters I even more 
keenly distrust the man who cares for other 
nations as much as for his own. I do not trust 
persons whose affections are so diffuse. There 
are men who look upon their wives or mothers 
or countries and upon other women and other 
countries with the same tepid equality of emo- 
tion. I do not regard these men as noble or 
broad-minded. I regard them as rotten. 

This great war has offered the supreme test of 
the only kind of internationalism worth talk- 
ing about, the sound internationalism which 
impHes power and courage and disinterested 
willingness to sacrifice much in order to put 
down international wrong and establish inter- 
national right. When the emergency test was 
thus applied the professional internationalists 
showed themselves a sorry crew. The really 
powerful men of intrigue and action who pro- 
fessed adherence to the doctrine have been the 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 8i 

efficient and evil tools of German autocracy, 
militarism, and international tyranny. The 
milk-and-water intellectuals who prattled about 
the doctrine have been the timid and inefficient 
tools of the same foul masters. 

The great war for international right and 
justice has been carried on by the men who 
were nationalists first, patriots first, French- 
men or EngHshmen or Itahans or Americans 
first; and who were able to serve humanity at 
large precisely because they possessed the soul 
qualities which made them proudly devoted to 
their own nations, and proud to fight for their 
devotion. At this moment the menace of a 
peace which will consecrate German wrong- 
doing comes mainly from men who profess a 
wordy internationalism. It is the sound na- 
tionalists, the ardent patriots of the United 
States and of the free countries of western 
Europe, who are too proud not to fight to the 
end for Belgium and Servia and all the small 
well-behaved nations who are primarily threat- 
ened by the German horror. 

The cultivated American, the college-bred 
American, the American intellectual who pro- 
fesses the creed of internationahsm has turned 



82 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

down the path that leads to moral emascula- 
tion. He has given adhesion to those half- 
truths that are the most destructive of false- 
hoods; and these half-truths eat out the moral 
fibre of mankind as plague-germs eat out the 
healthy tissue of the physical body. He prac- 
tises a philosophy dear to those who think idly, 
dear to those who live vapidly, dear to those 
whose hearts are both cold and feeble. 

Let us remember this when the peace comes. 
Don't trust the pacifists; they are the enemies 
of righteousness. Don't trust the professional 
internationaHsts; they are the enemies of na- 
tionalism and Americanism. Both of these 
groups appeal to all weaklings, illusionists, 
materialists, lukewarm Americans, and fad- 
dists of all the types that vitiate sound na- 
tionalism. Their leaders are plausible make- 
believe humanitarians, who crave a notoriety 
that flatters their own egotism, who often 
mislead amiable and well-meaning but short- 
sighted persons, who care for their own worth- 
less carcasses too much to go anywhere near 
the front when fighting comes, but who in times 
of inert and slothful thinking, when war seems 
a remote possibility, can gain reputation by 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 83 

windy schemes which imply not the smallest 
self-sacrifice or service among those who ad- 
vocate them, and which therefore appeal to 
all exponents of intellectual vagary, senti- 
mental instability and eccentricity, and that 
sham altruism which seeks the cheap glory of 
words that betray deeds. All these elements 
combined may, when the people as a whole 
are not fully awake, betray this country into 
a course of folly for which when the hour of 
stern trial comes our bravest men will pay with 
blood and our bravest women with tears. For 
these illusionists do not pay with their own 
bodies for the dreadful errors into which they 
have led a nation. They strut through their 
time of triumph in the hours of ease, and when 
the hours of trial come they scatter instantly 
and let the nationalists, the old-fashioned pa- 
triots, the men and women who believe in the 
virile fighting virtues, accept the burden and 
carry the load, meet the dangers and make 
the sacrifices, and give themselves to and for 
the country. Nations are made, defended, and 
preserved, not by the illusionists, but by the 
men and women who practise the homely vir- 
tues in time of peace, and who in time of right- 



84 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

eous war are ready to die, or to send those they 
love best to die, for a shining ideal. 

This war, into which we helplessly drifted 
without preparation, and in which for the first 
year and a quarter we did so lamentably ill, 
nevertheless may mean the moral salvation of 
our people. It has lifted us out of the stew of 
sordid materialism, flavored with sham senti- 
mentality. It has brought us face to face with 
the eternal verities which were manfully faced 
by our fathers in the days of Lincoln, by our 
forefathers in the days of Washington. It has 
taught us again to realize the worth of the 
great basic virtues, the fundamental virtues of 
manhood and womanhood, which enabled 
Washington and Lincoln and the men of Valley 
Forge and the men of Gettysburg to build and 
to maintain this republic as the hope of the 
free nations of mankind. Those men were 
not internationalists. They were Americans. 
That is why we are proud to be their fellow 
countrymen. That is why they have been an 
inspiration to the best men of all other nations. 

There is no limit to the greatness of the 
future before America, before our beloved land. 
But we can realize it only if we are Americans, 



NATIONALISM, INTERNATIONALISM 85 

if we are nationalists, with all the fervor of our 
hearts and all the wisdom of our brains. We 
can serve the world at all only if we serve 
America first and best. We must work along 
our own national lines in every field of achieve- 
ment. We must feel in the very marrow of 
our being that our loyalty is due only to Amer- 
ica, and that it is not diluted by loyalty for 
any other nation or all other nations on the 
face of the earth. Only thus shall we fit our- 
selves really to serve other nations, to refuse 
ourselves to wrong them, and to refuse to let 
them do wrong or suffer wrong. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE GERMAN HORROR 

THE Germans have themselves coined 
the words by which to describe and 
denounce their conduct in this war. 
These are the words Schreckhchkeit and Kul- 
tur. They use the word Schreckhchkeit ac- 
curately in telling of their deeds. Its literal 
translation is Horror. Kultur as used by them 
has become a term of derision for the outside 
world. It can be translated as culture only 
in a pathological sense. German "Kultur" is 
precisely analogous to a ''culture" of cholera- 
germs. 

It sounds well, for the moment, to say that 
we war against the German Government but 
love the German people. Yet the antithesis 
thus drawn is misleading, and the effect of 
the statement is mischievous. It plays into 
the hands of the pro-Germans and pacifists, 
who at once ask: "Then why fight people we 
love?" Such a question is difficult to answer; 

86 



THE GERMAN HORROR 87 

and inasmuch as our going to war can be justi- 
fied only — although amply — by admitting that 
we ought to have gone to war two years pre- 
viously, it is unwise to furnish further ammuni- 
tion to the fooHsh or sinister creatures who 
seek to embarrass the government by asking 
why we now make war for causes which during 
two years and a half we were told did not justify 
war. 

Moreover, the statement, in addition to 
being unwise, is untrue. There is no such dif- 
ference between the German Government and 
the German people as is implied. Unques- 
tionably the hideous wrong-doing of the Ger- 
man Government to-day would have struck 
with horror and amazement the German people 
of fifty years ago — still more the men of '48, 
who had faith in the vision of justice and mercy. 
But the scientific, efficient, and utterly ruthless 
and conscienceless administration which Prus- 
sia under the Hohenzollerns has imposed on 
all Germany during the last half-century has 
completely debauched the German people. 

We must remember that serfage did not come 
to an end in Germany until as a sequel to the 
wars of Napoleon. The constitution of Prus- 



88 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

sian society is aristocratic, capitalistic, and mili- 
taristic to the core, and the guiding and ruling 
minority of this society has for a couple of cen- 
turies been saturated with the spirit of cynical 
and faithless brutality. It was this ruling 
minority which, after using for its own end 
the Tugendbund, and the self-sacrificing 
idealism of the German popular revolt against 
Napoleon, instantly betrayed its liberty-loving 
supporters when once Napoleon was over- 
thrown. 

Unfortunately for Germany, of the German 
leaders of the mid-nineteenth century those 
who were liberal were pacifist and impractical, 
and they could not make headway against the 
selfish and brutal but severely practical genius 
of the men who followed Bismarck. The very 
docility of the German masses, long accustomed 
to being ruled, made them easy victims of the 
domineering, materialistic, hard-headed and 
coarse-tempered upper classes who rose to 
the surface as Germany became Prussianized. 
The autocracy was victorious at home and 
abroad; its rule was ruinous to the souls of 
the people, but it shrewdly took care of their 
bodies; and it completely subdued them to 



THE GERMAN HORROR 89 

its will. By degrees the intellectuals became 
as repulsively indifferent to all morality that 
was not strictly tribal as the militarists them- 
selves; and the masses blindly followed suit. 

The attitude of the professors and literary 
men in this war has been as abhorrent, as ut- 
terly vile, as that of the brutes in uniform who 
have planned and carried out the wholesale 
murders, the obscene and loathsome cruelties 
and devastations, the huge slave-raids, and the 
carnivals of destruction in the conquered lands. 
The bombing of American hospitals and sub- 
marining of Canadian hospital-ships are merely 
minor instances of what has been done. And 
the people as a whole have applauded the in- 
famies committed and have enthusiastically 
supported the authors of these infamies. 

In nations as in men there is apt to be a 
mixture of the Dr. Jekyll and the Mr. Hyde; 
and able leaders, according to the degree in 
which conscience and wisdom guide their abiHty, 
bring to the fore one or the other type of na- 
tional characteristic. For half a century in 
Germany as a whole, and for a much longer 
time in Prussia, the effective national leader- 
ship has been such as to develop efficiency on 



90 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

a basis as fundamentally immoral, both from 
the international and the democratic stand- 
points, as that of ancient Assyria herself. The 
conscience of the German people has been 
thoroughly debauched. In consequence the 
German people now stand behind their govern- 
ment and heartily support it in every infamy 
it commits. The greatest good fortune that 
could befall the German people would be the 
crushing defeat of Germany. Until such a 
defeat occurs we can only say that, unless the 
German people separate themselves from and 
condemn and repudiate, instead of upholding, 
the German Government, all right-minded and 
courageous men must include them in a com- 
mon condemnation. 

Many of our politicians are p avidly fearful 
of admitting this obvious fact lest they offend 
the '' German vote." Political expediency is 
right enough in its place; but not when it con- 
flicts with vital national interest. Our people 
are not to be excused if they fail now to insist 
that the day for temporizing with avowedly 
foreign *' votes" has passed. We have in this 
country room only for thoroughgoing Amer- 
icans. We care not where the man's parents 



THE GERMAN HORROR 91 

are from or where he himself was born, or what 
religion he professes, so long as he is in good 
faith and without reservation an American and 
nothing else. But if he tries to be half Amer- 
ican and half something else, it is proof positive 
that he isn't an American at all and the sooner 
he gets out of the country the better. Some 
of the German-American papers who fear 
to commit treason by openly championing 
"Deutschland," Germany, now try to com- 
promise by preaching devotion to "Deutsch- 
tum," that is, Germanism. This really rep- 
resents no improvement. Germanism here at 
home is the foe of Americanism and those 
who believe in it should go back to Germany, 
where they belong. Germanism abroad is the 
foe not only of America but of all free and self- 
respecting nations. The hideous iniquities 
committed by Germany during the present 
war have been deliberately ordered by the 
German Government as part of its deliberate 
campaign of "Schrecklichkeit," of horror. 
They are not sporadic, they are systematic. 
Because of them Germany has earned the loath- 
ing felt only for criminals of utterly debased 
type. Vernon Kellogg, an eye-witness, in an 



92 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Atlantic Monthly article, has shown that the 
German people stand behind their government 
and share its dreadful guilt. 



CHAPTER VII 

SERVICE AND SELF-RESPECT 

TT "TNLESS democracy is based on the 
I I principle of service by everybody who 
^^-^ claims the enjoyment of any right, it 
is not true democracy at all. The man who 
refuses to render, or is ashamed to render, the 
necessary service is not fit to live in a democ- 
racy. And the man who demands from an- 
other a service which he himself would esteem 
it dishonorable or unbecoming to render is to 
that extent not a true democrat. No man 
has a right to demand a service which he does 
not regard as honorable to render; nor has 
he a right to demand it unless he pays for it 
in some way, the payment to include respect for 
the man who renders it. Democracy must mean 
mutuality of service rendered, and of respect 
for the service rendered. 

A leading Russian revolutionist (who is, of 
course, like every true friend of freedom, an 
opponent of the Bolsheviki) recently came to 

93 



94 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

this country from Vladivostock. He traversed 
the Siberian railway. The porter on his train 
refused to get him hot water or to black his 
boots; stating with true Bolshevistic logic that 
democracy meant that nobody must do any- 
thing for any one else and that anyhow his 
union would turn him out if he rendered such 
service. 

Now, this Bolsheviki porter was foolish 
with a folly that can only be induced by pro- 
longed and excessive indulgence in Bolshe- 
vism or some American analogue. But the 
root trouble in producing his folly was the 
fact that under the old system the men whose 
boots the porter blacked looked down on him 
for blacking them. Are we entirely free from 
this attitude in America.'' Until we are we 
may as well make up our minds that to just 
that extent we are providing for the growth 
of Bolshevism here. No man has a right 
to ask or accept any service unless under 
changed conditions he would feel that he could 
keep his entire self-respect while rendering it. 
Service which carries with it the slightest im- 
plication of social abasement should not be 
rendered. 



SERVICE AND SELF-RESPECT 95 

For a number of years I lived on a ranch 
in the old-time cattle country; and I also 
visited at the house of a backwoods lumber- 
jack friend. In both places we Hved under 
old-style American conditions. We all of us 
worked, and our social distinctions were es- 
sentially based on individual worth. We ac- 
cepted as a matter of course that the difference 
in degree of service rendered ought at least 
roughly to correspond to the difference in re- 
ward. Each did most of the purely personal 
things for himself. But nobody thought of 
any necessary work as degrading. 

I remember that once, when there was a 
lull in outdoor work, I endeavored to be useful 
in and around the house. I fed the pigs; and 
on an idle morning I blacked all the boots. 
Ordinarily our boots did not need blacking — 
most of them were not that kind. On this 
occasion I started, with an enthusiasm that 
outran my judgment, to black the dress boots 
of every one, of both sexes. I coated them 
with a thick, dull paste; only a few knobs be- 
came shiny; and the paste came off freely on 
what it touched. As a result I temporarily 
lost not merely the respect but even the affec- 



96 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

tion of all the other inmates of the house. 
However, I did not lose caste because I had 
blacked the boots. I lost caste because I had 
blacked them badly. But I was allowed to 
continue feeding the pigs. The pigs were not 
so particular as the humans. 

Now, there is no more reason for refusing 
to bring hot water or black boots or serve a 
dinner or make up a bed or cook or wash clothes 
(I have cooked and washed clothes often — but 
neither wisely nor well) than for refusing to 
shoe a horse, run a motor, brake a train, sell 
carpets, manage a bank, or run a farm. A few 
centuries back men of good lineage felt that 
they lost caste if they were in trade or finance — 
in some countries they feel so to this day. In 
most civilized lands, however, the feeling has 
disappeared, and it never occurs to any one 
to look down on any one else because he sells 
things. Just the same feeling should obtain, 
and as we grow more civilized will obtain, about 
all other kinds of service. This applies to do- 
mestic service. It is as entirely right to em- 
ploy housemaids, cooks, and gardeners as to 
employ lawyers, bankers, and business men 
or cashiers, factory-hands, and stenographers. 



SERVICE AND SELF-RESPECT 97 

But only on condition that we show the same 
respect to the individuals in one case as in 
the other cases ! 

Ultimately I hope that this respect will show 
itself in the forms of address, in the courtesy 
titles used, as well as the consideration shown, 
and the personal liberty expected and accorded. 
I am not demanding an instant change — I be- 
lieve in evolution rather than revolution. But 
I am sure the change is possible and desirable; 
and even although it would be foolish and 
undesirable to set up the entirely new standard 
immediately, I hope we can work toward it. 
One of the most charming gentlewomen I know, 
the wife of a man of rare cultivation, ability, 
and public achievement, lives on the top floor 
of a tenement-house in a Western city. The 
rooms are comfortably and daintily furnished — 
with an abundance of books. In this household 
the maid was introduced to me as Miss So- 
and-So; and this is the ideal. Of course it 
cannot be realized until there has been much 
education on both sides. But it should be the 
ideal. All relations between employer and 
employee should be based on mutuality of 
respect and consideration; arrogance met by 



98 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

insolence, or an alternation of arrogance and 
insolence, offers but a poor substitute. 

Mutuality of respect and consideration, ser- 
vice and a reward corresponding as nearly as 
may be to the service — these make up the ideal 
of democracy. Such an ideal is as far from the 
stupid bourbonism of reaction as it is from the 
vicious lunacy of the Bolsheviki or I. W. W. 
type. Perhaps the beginning of its realiza- 
tion may come through the introduction of 
universal military training. Some months ago 
I went through the National Army, or drafted 
men's, camp at Chillicothe, Ohio. There were 
some thirty thousand men in the camp — ^Amer- 
icans of fine type, who were having the finest 
kind of education, for these camps are the 
true universities of American citizenship. An 
exceptionally efficient and far-seeing army 
officer, Major-General Glenn, was in command. 
He kept admirable discipline, he tolerated no 
slackness, no failure in duty of any kind, and 
by his initiative and personality he was over- 
coming all obstacles and making capital sol- 
diers of his men. He showed with especial 
pride the Red Cross Community House. It 
is a huge building, very attractive, with a big 



SERVICE AND SELF-RESPECT 99 

restaurant, reading-rooms, and a dance -hall. 
When off duty officers and enlisted men come 
there and bring their friends of both sexes, 
with absolutely no restriction save, as Gen- 
eral Glenn put it, that "every man is to act 
as a gentleman and every woman as a gentle- 
woman." (When we have universal service, 
and every man has served in the ranks, and 
representatives of every class have commissions, 
there will be merely the same distinction be- 
tween sergeants and lieutenants as between 
captains and colonels.) In the restaurant the 
major-general and a private from the ranks 
may — and sometimes do — sit at the same 
table. All come alike to the dances. All 
alike enjoy the privileges of the reading-rooms. 
All behave with self-respect. Each respects 
the others. When they go back to duty each 
does his allotted task in his allotted position, 
with eager and zealous efficiency, and with 
alert, orderly, and instant discipHne. Surely 
this is the mihtary ideal for a democracy — 
twenty years ago my own regiment realized 
just this ideal. Surely it also represents sub- 
stantially the democratic ideal toward which 
we should strive in civil life. It is as far re- 



iGo THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

moved from the brutal and repulsive folly 
of Bolshevism on the one hand as from the 
intolerable autocratic tyranny of the Hohen- 
zollern type on the other. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA AND THE 
BOLSHEVIST CHARYBDIS 

FROM the days when civilized man first 
began to strive for self-government and 
democracy success in this effort has 
depended primarily upon the ability to steer 
clear of extremes. For almost its entire length 
the course lies between Scylla and Charybdis; 
and the heated extremists who insist upon 
avoiding only one gulf of destruction invari- 
ably land in the other — and then take refuge 
in the meagre consolation afforded by denounc- 
ing as "inconsistent" the pilot who strives to 
avoid both. Throughout past history Liberty 
has always walked between the twin terrors 
of Tyranny and Anarchy. They have stalked 
like wolves beside her, with murder in their 
red eyes, ever ready to tear each other's 
throats, but even more ready to rend in sunder 
Liberty herself. Always in the past there has 
been a monotonously recurrent cycle in the 

lOI 



102 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

history of free states; Liberty has supplanted 
Tyranny, has gradually been supplanted by 
Anarchy, and has then seen the insupportable 
Anarchy finally overthrown and Tyranny re- 
established. Anarchy is always and every- 
where the handmaiden of Tyranny and Liber- 
ty's deadliest foe. No people can permanently 
remain free unless it possesses the stern self- 
control and resolution necessary to put down 
anarchy. Order without Hberty and liberty 
without order are equally destructive; special 
privilege for the few and special privilege for 
the many are aUke profoundly anti-social; 
the fact that unlimited individualism is ruin- 
ous, in no way alters the fact that absolute 
state ownership and regimentation spells ruin 
of a different kind. All of this ought to be 
trite to reasonably intelligent people — even if 
they are professional intellectuals — but in 
practice an endless insistence on these simple 
fundamental truths is endlessly necessary. 

Before our eyes the unfortunate Russian 
nation furnishes an example on a gigantic 
scale of what to avoid in oscillating between 
extremes. The autocratic and bureaucratic 
despotism of the Romanoffs combined extreme 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 103 

tyranny with extreme inefficiency; and the 
Bolshevists have turned the revolution into a 
veritable Witches' Sabbath of anarchy, plunder, 
murder, utterly faithless treachery and in- 
efficiency carried to the verge of complete dis- 
integration. Each side sought salvation by 
formulas which were condemned alike by com- 
mon sense and common morality; and even 
these formulas were by their actions belied. 

I do not say these things from any desire to 
speak ill of the Russian people. I am far too 
conscious of our own smug shortcoming during 
the world war to wish to comment harshly on 
a great people which has suffered terribly and 
which battled bravely for the three years dur- 
ing which we as a nation earned the curse of 
Meroz by the complacent and greedy selfish- 
ness with which we refused to come to the 
help of the Lord against the mighty — while 
our leaders with unctuous hypocrisy justified 
our course by deliberate falsehood and by a 
sham sentimentahty which under the circum- 
stances was nauseous. Our astute profiting 
by the valor of others saved us from paying 
the terrible penalty which Russia has paid; 
but from the standpoint of national and inter- 



104 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

national morality our offense was well-nigh 
as rank as Russia's. Since the Bolshevists 
rose to power Russia has betrayed her own 
honor and the cause of world democracy, 
and the Hberties of well-behaved minorities 
within her own borders, and the right to liberty 
and self-government of small, well-behaved 
nations everywhere. But for the two years 
after the Lusitania was sunk, we continued to 
fawn on the blood-stained murderers of our 
people, we were false to ourselves and we were 
false to the cause of right and of Hberty and 
democracy throughout the world. Had we 
done our duty when the Lusitania was sunk, 
instead of following the advice of the apostles 
of greedy and peaceable infamy, the world 
war with its dreadful slaughter would long 
ago have been over. Incidentally Russia would 
have been saved from the abyss into which 
she has fallen, for in her inevitable revolution 
the Bolshevists would not have had the Ger- 
man support which has enabled them to 
wrench loose the very foundations of their 
country. No wonder poor Kerensky during 
his brief and perilous moment of leadership 
exclaimed that it was America's turn to do the 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 105 

fighting and endure the loss, for the three years' 
effort had strained Russia to the snapping- 
point. 

Moreover, we can feel genuine sympathy 
with the immense mass of Russian peasants, 
who have never been given the chance to learn 
self-government or to discriminate between 
possibilities and impossibilities, and who in 
their ignorance and poverty, their suffering 
and bewilderment must not be too heavily 
blamed for behaving as, when all is said, a 
very considerable fraction of our own people 
were anxious to behave. And during the last 
year or eighteen months our own government 
has behaved toward Russia with such short- 
sightedness and infirmity of purpose, such 
failure to adopt either or any of the possible 
courses until it was too late to get more than 
a fraction of the possible benefit, that it be- 
hooves us to be very charitable in our estimate 
of the Russian people. We did not give the 
Soviet governments the peaceful economic 
aid they asked, nor promise them military aid 
against Germany when it seemed likely that 
they would accept it. Yet we did not back 
the Czecho-Slovaks by putting a substantial 



io6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

army in Siberia early last spring. We ought 
then to have put at least fifty thousand of our 
troops, under Leonard Wood, into Siberia; and 
had we done so the battle- front would now 
have been between the Urals and Moscow. But 
our government wabbled and hesitated, finally 
sent a few thousand men, promised aid to the 
Czecho-Slovaks, and then said that after all 
we must not go as far west as the Urals. We 
failed to put into Siberia a force comparable 
in size, and therefore in military efficiency, 
with the force put in by the Japanese; and 
we let the Japanese surpass us in military 
credit with the Siberian people and in laying 
the foundation for future economic relations 
with Siberia. We incurred the bitter hostihty 
of the Soviet leaders; but we rendered very 
little real help to any one. We broke the 
peace; but we only went to war a little. We 
were neither wise and generous friends nor 
just and fearless foes. We never acted until 
after the best time for action had passed. 
We hit; but we hit softly. 

Some part of the horror of famine and dis- 
ease which now Hes like a nightmare on the 
Russian people is due to our own failure to 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 107 

render efficient aid along any line in the past. 
This horror will grow worse during the winter 
that is opening; and surely it is our duty with 
generous and open-handed wisdom to bend 
every effort to sending help at the earliest pos- 
sible moment to the starving Russian people. 

It is absolutely imperative for the sake of 
this nation that we shall realize the lamentable 
calamities that have befallen Russia and shall 
condemn in sternest fashion the men in our own 
country who would invite such calamities for 
America. The reactionaries, the men whose 
only idea is to restore their power to the bour- 
bons of wealth and politics, and obstinately to 
oppose all rational forward movements for the 
general betterment, would, if they had their 
way, bring to this country the ruin wrought by 
the regime of the Romanoffs in Russia. To 
withstand the sane movement for social and 
industrial justice is enormously to increase the 
likelihood that the movement will be turned 
into insane and sinister channels. And to 
oscillate between the sheer brutal greed of the 
haves and the sheer brutal greed of the have- 
nots means to plumb the depths of degrada- 
tion. The soldiers who in this war have battled 



io8 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

at the front against autocracy will not sub- 
mit to the enthronement of privilege at home. 
They believe in discipline and leadership, they 
believe in the superior reward going to leaders 
hke General Pershing and Admiral Sims; 
but they believe that in time the difference in 
industrial reward between the good man at 
the top of the management class and the good 
man in the working man's class ought roughly 
to correspond to the difference in reward be- 
tween the general and the sergeant-major, 
the admiral and the warrant-officer. 

We will not submit to privilege in the form 
of wealth. Just as little will we submit to the 
privilege of a mob. There are no worse 
enemies of America than the American Bol- 
shevists and the crew of politicians who pander 
to them. We ought therefore clearly to under- 
stand what the Bolsheviki attempted in Russia 
and what after a year of power they have done 
for, or rather to, Russia. They utterly re- 
pudiated the idea of a democracy, where every 
man is guaranteed his rights and is limited in 
his power to do wrong. Their effort was to 
create a Marxian socialistic state, based on the 
class-conscious purpose of the proletariat to 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 109 

destroy and rob every other class. They op- 
pressed and plundered impartially all former 
oppressors and wrong-doers and all former 
champions of fair dealing and liberty. They 
attacked the erstwhile corrupt bureaucrat 
or wealthy landowner who had neglected all 
his duties not a whit more venomously than 
they attacked the small shopkeeper or skilled 
mechanic or industrious farmer or thrifty 
working man whom, because he had saved some 
money and began to live decently, they de- 
nounced as having adopted "bourgeois stand- 
ards." They definitely sought to realize the 
stark formulas of Marxian socialism; and there- 
fore they have made a genuine contribution for 
warning and prevention against destructive 
adventure of a similar character in our own 
land. The followers of Trotzky and Lenine, 
like the followers of Robespierre and Marat, 
have just one lesson to teach the American 
people: what to avoid. 

In the peace treaty of last March the Russian 
Bolshevists and the German autocracy joined 
against the free nations. Anarchy and des- 
potism joined against liberty. The representa- 
tives of the privilege of a proletarian mob and 



no THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

the representatives of the privilege of a pluto- 
cratic oligarchy struck hands against the men 
who believe in no privilege. Germany sup- 
pressed Bolshevism and restored military order 
in the Russian provinces the Bolshevists ceded 
to her, and cynically supported Bolshevism 
in the rest of Russia precisely because Bol- 
shevism is a cancerous growth; Germany 
recognizes that anarchy destroys freedom; 
therefore Germany encourages anarchy in every 
land to which she cannot apply her own iron 
despotism; for she wishes to destroy every na- 
tion that she cannot enslave. The Bolshevist 
leaders — it matters not whether they were 
sinister visionaries or the corrupted agents of 
Germany — played Germany ^s game in order 
to gain a respite during which they brought still 
further destruction to their own countrymen. 
They preached socialism and practised anarchy 
— in their extreme forms the two always meet 
when the effort is made actually to apply them. 
Surely this lesson will not be lost on the 
people of the United States, the keen, kindly, 
brave people, who are often slow to wake but 
who are far-sighted and resolute when once 
awake. We of the United States must set 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA iii 

ourselves to the task of ordering our own house- 
hold in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. There- 
fore we must realize that the reactionaries 
among us are the worst foes of order, and the 
revolutionaries the worst foes of liberty; and 
unless we can preserve both order and liberty 
the republic is doomed. At the moment the 
profiteers, and all men who make fortunes out 
of this war, represent the worst types of re- 
actionary privilege; and on a level of evil 
with them stand all the various exponents of 
American Bolshevism. Prominent, although 
not always powerful, among the latter are the 
professional intellectuals, who vary from the 
soft-handed, noisily self-assertive frequenters of 
frowsy restaurants to the sissy socialists, the 
pink-tea and parlor Bolshevists, who support 
what they regard as "advanced" papers, and 
aspire to notoriety as make-beheve "reds." 
I call these persons "intellectuals" in deference 
to the terminology of European politics; for 
they ape the silly, half-educated people, and 
the educated able people with a moral or 
mental twist, who in almost every European 
country have found notoriety and excitement 
in fomenting revolutionary movements which 



112 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

they were utterly powerless to direct or control. 
Unless the term intellectual is to be construed 
as excluding either character or common sense, 
it can be applied to them only in irony. In 
our own vernacular they have been styled the 
exponents of ''Highbrow" Hearstism or Bol- 
shevism. The sincere and well-meaning among 
them come in the class of those described by 
Don Marquis in his account of "Hermione and 
her little group of serious thinkers." Those 
in this class usually furnish the funds with 
which their more astute brethren carry on the 
propaganda and earn a shifty livelihood. 
Worthy soft-headed persons of both sexes — 
including some who edit magazines or write 
for them — think it smart and uplifting to de- 
scribe with sympathy the Russian exile who 
wishes to smash our government because the 
"bourgeoisie" who love music can purchase 
reserved seats at a musical performance — I 
suppose they should be kept free for the "pro- 
letariat" to sit in ten at a time; or to eulogize 
the red-flag leaders of a "picnic of socialist 
locals" whose "spiritually alive" faces, in- 
flamed with "explosive ideas, big emotions, 
and winged visions" the particular member of 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 113 

Hermione's group of serious thinkers who 
chronicled them — and who evidently had not 
exercised the infinitesimal amount of thought 
necessary to realize just what these same ex- 
plosive ideas of the red-flag gentry were at 
that moment producing in Russia. 

I am referring to two articles chosen almost 
at random from respectable magazines. They 
represent a fad — a fad which is chiefly foolish, 
but which may become mischievous. The 
dilettante reds who gratify their vanity by 
this fad, play into the hands of the genuine 
reds, who are not dilettantes, and who resort 
to bomb-throwing, arson, robbery, and mur- 
der as a business and not as a fad. The lead- 
ers of the Germanized socialists of this country 
are traitors to America and to mankind just 
exactly as are the Bolshevist leaders in Russia; 
and some at least of the leaders of the Non- 
partisan League stand on the same footing. 
The leaders of the I. W. W. are no more vic- 
tims of social wrong, are no more protesters 
against social evil, than are so many profes- 
sional gunmen. There are plenty of honest, 
misled men among the rank and file of all these 
organizations; and plenty of wrongs from which 



114 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

these men suffer; but these men can be helped, 
and these wrongs remedied, only if we set our 
faces Hke flint against the evil leaders who 
would hurl our social organism into just such 
an abyss as that which has engulfed Russia. 

So much for the false friends of liberty. We 
must equally abhor the false friends of order. 
Those who invoke order to prevent the right- 
ing of wrong are the ultimate friends of dis- 
order. Our sternest effort should be exerted 
against the man of wealth and power who gets 
the wealth by harming others and uses the 
power without regard to the general welfare. 
In times ahead we must avoid equally both 
hardness of heart and softness of head. We 
must substitute the full performance of duty 
in a brotherly spirit, both for the mean and 
arrogant greed of the haves and for the mean 
and envious greed of the have-nots. At pres- 
ent Germany is dangerous as a huge man-eat- 
ing beast is dangerous; Russia is dangerous as 
an infected and plague-stricken body is danger- 
ous. We must guard against both. And 
within our own borders we must steer our 
great free republic as far from the Romanoff 
Scylla as from the Bolshevist Charybdis. 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 115 

I take Russia as an example of what to avoid 
merely because the lesson taught by Russia 
is vivid in the eyes of our people. Exactly 
the same lesson can be learned from the French 
Revolution of a century and a quarter ago. 
What I say now I said in March, 191 2, at 
Carnegie Hall: 

I prefer to work with moderate, with rational 
conservatives, provided only that they do in good 
faith strive forward toward the light. But when 
they halt and turn their backs to the light, and sit 
with the scorners on the seats of reaction, then I 
must part company with them. We, the people, 
cannot turn back. Our aim must be steady, wise 
progress. It would be well if our people would 
study the history of a sister republic. All the woes 
of France for a century and a quarter have been 
due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two 
camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreason- 
able radicalism. Had pre-revolutionary France lis- 
tened to men like Turgor, and backed them up, all 
would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of 
privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the short- 
sighted ultraconservatives turned down Turgor, 
and then found that, instead of him, they had ob- 
tained Robespierre. They gained twenty years' 
freedom from all restraint and reform, at the cost 
of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn 



ii6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a 
bHnd reaction; and so with convulsion and oscilla- 
tion from one extreme to another, with alternatives 
of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the 
French people went through misery toward a shat- 
tered goal. May we profit by the experiences of 
our brother republicans across the water, and go 
forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes; and 
may our ultraconservatives remember that the 
rule of the Bourbons brought on the Revolution; 
and may our would-be revolutionaries remember 
that no Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy 
of the people and of freedom as the professed friend 
of both, Robespierre. There is no danger of a 
revolution in this country, but there is grave dis- 
content and unrest, and in order to remove them 
there is need of all the wisdom and probity and deep- 
seated faith in and purpose to uplift humanity we 
have at our command. 

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for 
social and industrial justice, achieved through the 
genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our 
purpose. The methods for achieving the end are 
merely expedients to be finally accepted or rejected 
according as actual experience shows that they 
work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have 
this lofty purpose, and we must strive for it in all 
earnestness and sincerity, or our work will come to 
nothing. In order to succeed we need leaders of 
inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great 



THE ROMANOFF SCYLLA 117 

visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their 
dreams come true; who can kindle the people with 
the fire from their own burning souls. The leader 
for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an 
instrument to be used until broken, and then to be 
cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no 
more when he is broken than a soldier cares when 
he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the 
victory may be won. In the long fight for right- 
eousness the watchword for us all is "spend and be 
spent." It is of little matter whether any one man 
fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for 
it is the cause of mankind. 

We here in America hold in our hands the hope 
of the world, the fate of the coming years; and 
shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the 
light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the 
dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new con- 
tinent we merely build another country of great 
but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall 
have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we 
merely set the greed of envy against the greed of 
arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well- 
being of all of us. To turn this government either 
into government by a plutocracy or government by 
a mob would be to repeat on a larger scale the 
lamentable failures of the world that is dead. We 
stand against all tyranny by the few or by the 
many. We stand for the rule of the many in the 
interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a 



ii8 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose, 
above all in a spirit of kindly justice toward every 
man and every woman. We not merely admit but 
insist that there must be self-control on the part 
of the people, that they must keenly perceive their 
own duties as well as the rights of others; but we 
also insist that the people can do nothing, unless 
they not merely have, but exercise to the full, their 
own rights. The worth of our great experiment de- 
pends upon its being in good faith an experiment — 
the first that has ever been tried — in true democracy 
on the scale of a continent, on a scale as vast as 
that of the mightiest empires of the Old World. 
Surely this is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is 
worth while to strive, an ideal for which at need it 
is worth while to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the 
rule of all the people in a spirit of friendliest brother- 
hood toward each and every one of the people. 



CHAPTER IX 
PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 

THE most powerful indictment of the 
corrupt and inefficient tyranny of the 
Romanoffs, or rather of the Russian 
autocracy, is that it produced Bolshevism. 
Dreadful though it is that despotism should 
ruin men's bodies, it is worse that it should 
ruin men's souls. Vast physical distress was 
caused by the centuries of despotism which 
Russia owed to the fact that six hundred years 
ago she lacked military abiHty to repel the 
Mongol warriors. But this is overweighed by 
the dreadful qualities of soul which the despot- 
ism produced in those who suffered under it. 

We in America have a direct interest in this 
evil phenomenon. From the tyranny in Russia 
great numbers of Russians fled hither. Many 
of these — Mary Ant in is a type — ^were emi- 
nently fit to live in a land which, with all its 
faults, is a land of freedom and of opportunity; 
and these gave much to the land which gave 
119 



I20 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

them so much. But many have been merely 
sources of poisonous corruption to the nation 
which gave them an asylum. Many of the 
Bolshevist exiles to this land returned to Rus- 
sia when the revolution broke out, and most 
of these were filled with venom for this country. 
The prime cause lay not in our shortcomings — 
many though these are — but in their own cor- 
roded souls. This moral corrosion made them 
preach and practise the gospel of hatred and 
malice, not only toward all men of wealth 
whether they did good or evil, but toward all 
honest, hardworking, decent-living men and 
women who were not consumed by mean envy 
of others. 

These Russian exiles were not asked to come 
here. They came here so as to be free from 
persecution and to better themselves. They 
owe this country everything. But the only 
emotions aroused in the Bolshevist type are 
mean hatred, mean desire to slander, and a 
self-pity both mean and morbid. The moral 
and mental attitude it introduces into this 
country is much more permanently mischie- 
vous than the bubonic plague, and against it 
we should erect a far more rigorous quarantine. 



PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 121 

The oppressed of other lands who have de- 
veloped this kind of character should be kept 
out of this land at all hazards; and our immi- 
gration laws should promptly be changed ac- 
cordingly. There are plenty of sordid and 
arrogant capitalists in this land; but their most 
harmful and unlovely traits are no worse and 
no more dangerous than those of this particular 
type of professional proletarian. In its full 
development it produces the Lenines and Trotz- 
kys who have brought Russia to the brink 
of the abyss, and the Hillquits and Victor 
Bergers and Eastmans who would lead our 
people into a complete ruin, of which one item 
Vv^ould be subjection to the German autocracy. 
The most sordid capitalists and reactionaries 
can do no more harm to this country than these 
men, if given power, would do. The worst 
bourbons of poHtics and business stand no 
lower than these leaders of the American 
Bolshevists, of the I. W. W., the Germanized 
sociaHsts, the anarchists, and all the squalid 
crew who preach the gospel of envy and hatred, 
who preach a class war which, when preaching 
is translated into action, expresses itself through 
the bomb and the torch. 



/ 



122 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

These men are encouraged, and our own 
moral fibre is weakened, by the parlor or pink- 
tea or sissy Bolshevism dear to the hearts of so 
many of our people who like to think of them- 
selves as intellectuals, and who are, perhaps, 
particularly apt to find expression for their 
views in the New Republic.'^ Most certainly, 
hard indifference to the conditions and op- 
portunities of the immigrant is a hideous 
wrong; but it is not bettered by a dilettante 
sentimentalism on behalf of those among the 
immigrants who are of semicriminal type, 
whether or not they seek to mask their de- 
pravity by claiming to be the victims of social 
oppression. We must never again view the 

^The natural sympathy of Germanism for Bolshevism — 
whether the gutter Bolshevism beloved by the Hearst publica- 
tions, or the parlor Bolshevism inculcated by the New Republic — 
was incidentally and amusingly brought out by Assistant Attor- 
ney-General Becker in the course of an investigation among the 
interned enemy aliens at Fort Oglethorpe. One German testified 
that the most widely read periodicals among the interned Ger- 
mans were "the Nation of New York and lYieNew Republic. . . . 
[The Germans] make only a few subscriptions ... for fear that 
the government censor would catch on to the popularity of the 
Nation and the New Republic" Many of our professional in- 
tellectuals have made a contemptible showing in this war. At 
the "American Sociological Congress," which met in December, 
191 5, the speakers in large proportion seemed to be divided be- 
tween those engaged in inane pacifist prattle and those engaged 
in downright sinister German propaganda. 



PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 123 

immigrant merely as a labor unit. We must 
think of him only as a future citizen, whose 
children are to share with our children the 
heritage of this land. We must do for him 
everything that is right; and we must tolerate 
from him nothing that is wrong. 

I have spoken of immigrants of Bolshevist 
type. As a contrast I give the story of two 
Americans of the best American type. Otto 
Rafael was born on the East Side of New York, 
of parents who came from Russia. While I 
was police commissioner my attention was 
attracted to him by his saving a woman and 
a couple of children at a fire; I found him at 
the Bowery branch of the Y. M. C. A., although 
he is himself a Jew. He came on the poHce 
force. He did not spend his time in the in- 
dulgence of hate and envy toward those who 
were better off. He did his work as a police- 
man up to the handle, and he used his salary 
chiefly to help out his family. He brought 
over one or two kinsfolk from Russia; he edu- 
cated a sister; he enabled a brother to study 
for and become a doctor. He is now a lieu- 
tenant of police. At the same time that he 
entered the force an ex-man-of-war's man, who 



124 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

had served his time in the United States Navy, 
also entered the force. His name was Edward 
Burke; he is another American of the best 
type. His parents were born in Ireland. When 
the Spanish War came he got a holiday for six 
months, re-entered the navy, and served as 
captain of a gun. He is a hard man physically; 
I doubt if he can be hurt by anything that hasn't 
an edge to it. He is now a captain of police. 

Burke and Rafael were appointed on their 
merits; I wanted to get the best possible men 
for the force, and they owed me gratitude for 
putting them there only to the extent that I 
owed them gratitude for being the kind of men 
I wanted. In other words, they owed me 
nothing. But they have chosen to remain 
very stanch friends, in fair weather and foul 
weather. When we entered the great war, 
both went into training to get in the division 
I had asked permission to raise; each fitting 
himself for special work — Burke handling ma- 
chine-guns, while Rafael's particular line I 
for the moment forget. Both would have 
held commissions under me if I had been al- 
lowed to raise troops. 

These two men represent Americanism as 



PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 125 

opposed to Bolshevism. They did not wallow 
in the emotional mud-bath, which consists of 
one part morbid self-pity and three parts envy, 
hatred, and malice toward others — a mixture 
equally maudlin and sinister. They didn't 
pity themselves at all. They didn't hate 
others. They merely resolved to do as well 
as others. And they did so. They were men. 

I do not mean that these two men can be 
taken as typical of the whole mass. They were 
exceptions. They had power of initiative and 
of leadership. It is our duty to help make 
conditions such that life will be fairer and 
easier for all, and the highways of opportunity 
kept more open than hitherto. But our aim 
can be reached by encouraging the essentially 
American activities and attitude shown by 
these two men, and not by practising parlor 
Bolshevism ourselves or encouraging applied 
and murderous Bolshevism among immigrants. 

The Bolshevists have no lesson to teach 
America except what to avoid. They have 
betrayed democracy in America, England, and 
France. They have plunged Russia into ruin. 
They fatuously hoped by this betrayal of their 
allies to make peace with the German mili- 



126 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

taristic autocracy, and then to betray it in 
turn. But the Germans were just as false, 
cunning, and treacherous, and a thousand 
times more able; and having made the Bolshe- 
viki publish themselves to the world as traitors 
to liberty, they have now proceeded to trample 
them under foot. And the Bolsheviki showed 
wilHngness only to fight their fellow Russians; 
they were helpless before the German invaders. 
Their chief energies have been devoted to 
what Lenine calls "internal war." They have 
announced, as reported in the press, that they 
intend to confiscate all the property of the 
"small shopkeepers, more or less well-to-do 
peasants, and workers who have submitted to 
a bourgeois point of view" — that is, thrifty 
skilled mechanics. In other words, their hos- 
tility is now concentrated on the analogues of 
American farmers, small shopkeepers, carpen- 
ters, steel puddlers, engineers, trainmen, black- 
smiths, clerks, deep-sea fishermen, and the like. 
They announced at one time (before they 
finally and definitely threw Russia under the 
German yoke) that these men and their wives 
were to be employed to dig trenches, presum- 
ably because they thought they were unused to 



PARLOR BOLSHEVISM 127 

this form of labor, the announcement reading: 
*'A11 members of the bourgeois class, the women 
as well as the men, must enter these battahons 
under surveillance of the Red Guard and in 
case of resistance must be shot." No more 
utter tyranny existed under the Romanoffs. 
They purpose to stamp out of existence all the 
men of leadership and of special value, all the 
men whose activities do most to prevent the 
commonwealth from sinking to that level of 
savagery on which the tonguey, supple, and 
either immoral or crack-brained anarchist lead- 
ers would land their deluded followers. 

The precise analogues of these Russian lead- 
ers preach similar doctrines and a similar class 
war here in the United States. They are per- 
mitted to do so because it is our wise principle 
not to interfere with free speech by prohibiting 
the preaching even of moral treason until the 
narrow limits of legal treason are reached; and 
our people as a whole regard them with good- 
humored and rather ignorant indifference. But 
there should be no mistake as to the fact that 
the preaching of this kind of class war has 
nothing in common with ordinary political dis- 
cussion or party differences. The attempt to 



128 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

translate it into serious action would mean real 
war — and in a healthy country like ours the 
lunatic fringe would not come ofF first best in 
such event. And in such event if the real Bol- 
shevists were successful the parlor Bolshevists 
would be among the first to be destroyed — 
exactly as the Petit Trianon disciples of Rous- 
seau were among the first to fall when the red 
terror swept France. And if (as would surely 
happen) the real Bolshevists were not success- 
ful, the parlor Bolshevists would owe their 
shivering safety to the applied and practical 
Americanism of men Hke Burke and Rafael. 

It is the Burkes and Rafaels and the men of 
like quality in every section of our country 
and in every walk of life, whatever their creed 
and whatever their ancestry, who stand for the 
real and practical Americanism; and it is in 
their hands that the future of this country lies. 



CHAPTER X 

TELL THE TRUTH AND SPEED UP 
THE WAR 

OUR prime need now is, and for eighteen 
months has been, to speed up the war. 
The chief method of making the gov- 
ernment meet this need has been telling the 
truth. 

In handling our army and navy deeds are 
everything and words unbacked by deeds or 
betrayed by deeds are worse than nothing. 
When last March General Wood and Gdneral 
Young and Mr. Taft and the present writer 
asked for the immediate raising of an army of 
five milhon troops (we meant fighting soldiers, 
and not an alloy of 40 per cent of non-comba- 
tants), our purpose was not rhetorical. We 
desired to see the army provided for by law 
and then called into being by executive action. 
But to President Wilson the matter seemed 
primarily one of competitive rhetoric. Obvi- 
ously he felt uneasy about the proposal and 

129 



I30 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

treated ft as one which could be deftly put 
aside by adroit use of language. Accordingly, 
with marked histrionic effect, he asked, "why 
limit the army" to the five million we pro- 
posed, and announced that he wished an army 
/'without limit." This was highly satisfactory 
as rhetoric. But the action of the President, 
taken through his Secretary of War, showed 
that it was merely rhetoric. The phrase was 
an ''army without limit"; the fact was that the 
army was fixed at a much lower limit than that 
which we had asked, and was thus fixed six 
months after we urged immediate action. Sec- 
retary Baker did not set himself to meet our 
greatest military need of to-day, which is a 
thorough mobihzation of our whole man-power 
for service in our armies and in our war indus- 
tries. He set himself to prevent the meeting 
of this need. Congress last spring made ready 
to go ahead with the ''fight or work" plan. 
But Mr. Baker, acting for the President, inter- 
vened. He asked for delay, for procrastina- 
tion, and of course thereby paralyzed congres- 
sional action. He protested against the en- 
largement of the draft-age limits. He protested 
against planning more than a few months in 



TELL THE TRUTH 131 

advance. He said that we were "many months 
ahead of our original hope in regard to the 
transportation of men" overseas; but he omitted 
to add that this was because the original plans 
were hopelessly inadequate. 

Never in our history has there been more fat- 
uous incompetence than that displayed, aHke 
in plan and action, by the War Department 
during the first nine months after we entered 
the war. Then the Military Affairs Committee 
of the Senate rendered the American people 
its debtor by stepping in and forcing some 
reorganization, some efl&ciency, in the War De- 
partment. But the Department still refused 
to do anything that really counted overseas. 
In March, when the great German drive began, 
a year after we had entered the war, our gal- 
lant little army in France numbered fewer 
soldiers (not non-combatants) than those in 
the army of little Belgium, and did not possess 
a single airplane, tank, or field-gun, save those 
we had obtained from the hard-pressed French. 
The tremendous German drive galvanized even 
the War Department into action. It was Lu- 
dendorff who effectively revised the plans of 
President Wilson and Secretary Baker. 



132 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Then the English lent us ships, and we really 
did begin to send men abroad, until we had 
perhaps a million soldiers and over half as 
many non-combatants across. We actually 
did what we ought to have done, and by 
the exercise of moderate efficiency would have 
done, just one year previously. But in June 
the drive for the time being halted, and imme- 
diately Mr. Baker proposed a reversion to our 
former Rip Van Winkle slumber. Of course, 
what we ought to do now is with the utmost 
energy to prepare to place a gigantic army 
overseas next year. We have begun in earnest 
to build ships and airplanes, and are preparing 
to build cannon and tanks. We are more 
populous and with greater resources than Ger- 
many. We are more populous than France 
and Great Britain combined. These nations 
have been through a terrible four years' war. 
We have as yet suffered no serious strain. 
Next spring we ought to have in France an 
army larger than the German army. We ought 
to have an army larger than the armies of 
England and France combined; we ought to 
have our troops fighting alongside the gallant 
Italian army and in the Balkans; we ought to 



TELL THE TRUTH 133 

have one or two hundred thousand men ferried 
in Japanese ships to take part in the great war 
for civiHzation against the Turks in western 
Asia; and we ought to have at least a hundred 
thousand fighting troops in Siberia. This 
means that we ought to have overseas next 
spring an army of five milHon fighting men, 
which in turn means that we ought to provide 
now for an army of between six and seven mil- 
lion men all told. 

Nor is it only our army as to which there is 
now failure to provide for the future. The 
same is true for the navy. During the first 
six months of the war the navy was almost as 
badly handled as the army, and it has not yet 
recovered from its complete mismanagement 
during the previous four years. Four years 
ago Admiral Bradley Fiske dared to tell the 
truth about naval conditions. He thereby ren- 
dered a very great service to the country, and 
for doing this the authorities punished him, 
exactly as Wood was punished for similar truth- 
telling; and thereby in both cases they served 
notice on the best men in the army and navy 
that they jeopardized their careers if they told 
the truth in the interest of our people as a 



134 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

whole. During the last nine months the navy- 
appears to have been on the whole well han- 
dled — and the officers and enlisted men on the 
ships have made the same admirable record 
that has been made by the officers and enlisted 
men of our army and marine corps ashore. 
Admiral Sims and those serving under him 
have made all our people their debtors. But 
it now also appears from the pubhshed letters 
and statements of Admirals Benson and Palmer 
that we are not taking thought for the future 
so far as the navy is concerned. The two ad- 
mirals show that we are far short of the proper 
number not only of enlisted men but of officers. 
Incidentally the letter of Admiral Palmer, 
dated June 7, shows that the naval experts 
in the Department reported to the Secretary 
that we need *'an enHsted strength of 225,000 
men, if we are to carry on a successful war." 
Mr. Daniels, however, refused to follow 1/he 
recommendations of his skilled naval advisers 
and asked only for 131,000 men, which, says 
Admiral Palmer, *'is very much less than our 
requirements to organize the navy for war," 
and the leading majority members of the House 
Naval Committee opposed even this increase. 



TELL THE TRUTH 135 

Admiral Palmer in his letter states the truth 
with vigorous precision, saying that the fleet 
and shore organizations of the navy "on paper 
appear to be ready for any emergency; but 
actually they are not. ... To fail to recog- 
nize this situation is to court national disas- 
ter. . . . Such a weakness in the navy invites 
a national catastrophe. Even though, through 
the strength of our allies, no national catas- 
trophe does come, it is not a wise policy to 
spend a billion and a half for a navy a year, 
and then not use it well because it costs a mil- 
lion more to pay the men to run it properly." 
Admiral Benson, in taking the same position, 
derides anew the argument that we need not 
prepare because "the war may end soon," and 
says that even if this fatuous statement is true, 
"a navy comparable with our importance is 
the first essential. . . . Ships alone cannot 
make a navy ... it is equally essential that 
we have the men to man these ships and the 
ofiicers of all grades sufficient to insure the 
efficiency of the whole." 

Reading these admirable statements by 
trained war officers, we realize keenly the grave 
wrong done this nation when the administra- 



136 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

tion deliberately muzzled the army oificers, 
who before the war could and would have told 
our people their urgent military needs, by the 
following order: 

War Department, 
Washington, February 23, 191 5. 
General Orders No. 10. 

Officers of the Army will refrain, until further 
orders, from giving out for publication any inter- 
view, statement, discussion, or article on the mili- 
tary situation in the United States or abroad, as 
any expression of their views on this subject at 
present is prejudicial to the best interests of the 
service. 

[2260070, A. G. O.j 

By order of the Secretary of War: 

H. L. Scott, 
Brigadier General, Chief of Staff, 

By this order we deprived our people of all 
chance of learning from miHtary experts our 
military needs. Our soldiers, the men of deeds, 
were forbidden to tell us how to turn our talk 
into deeds; and they were thus forbidden by 
the pohticians, the men of phrases, who talked 
incessantly and did nothing to back up their 
talk. 



TELL THE TRUTH 137 

It is well to remember that, when this order 
was issued, the present Secretary of War, Mr. 
Baker, was mayor of Cleveland; and he at 
about that time notified the representatives of 
the Security League that "he was a pacifist 
and was opposed to the agitation for prepared- 
ness." A year later, although President Wil- 
son had been notified by Ambassador Gerard 
that Germany intended to attack America if 
victorious over the Allies, he appointed Mr. 
Baker Secretary of War. By no possibility 
could Mr. Wilson have rendered a greater ser- 
vice to the Kaiser and the German militarists. 

A Russian peasant woman, Madam Botch- 
kareva, a major in the Woman's Death Bat- 
talion, who has been wounded four times in 
battle with the Germans, came here from Si- 
beria last May to beg us to help Russia with 
facts instead of phrases. The authorities in 
Washington have at each successive crisis in 
Russia acted from one to ten months after 
the action was useless. They failed to give 
economic help. They feared to take military 
action. They endeavored to conciliate the 
Bolshevists and yet not to do anything for 
them. They endeavored to oppose the pro- 



138 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

German Russians, and yet not to offend them 
too deeply. They hoped for success in the 
effort, so dear to those who at heart are pacifists, 
to hit soft, to hit a little, but not very much. 
Botchkareva insisted that only an army 
(backed, of course, by ample economic aid for 
the Russians) would be of real help to Russia 
against the Germans and the pro-German 
Bolshevists, and she was outspoken in her 
comments on the proposal to hit soft, remark- 
ing to one of our high administrators: "You 
Americans seem to delight in rivers of words. 
I have no time for words. I want to know 
what you are going to do to stop Germany; 
and I am here to tell you one way of doing it." 

Recently there have occurred several in- 
cidents which ought to wake this nation to 
recognition of the fact that fine phrases are 
no substitutes for brave deeds, and that re- 
liance upon them represents folly. 

For several years we submitted (as we are 
now submitting) to the murder of our citizens, 
the rape of our women, and finally to the killing 
of our soldiers, by the authorized representa- 
tives of the Mexican Government. We waged 
two inglorious little wars with the Mexican 



TELL THE TRUTH 139 

Government, but finally admitted defeat and 
not only recognized but fawned upon those 
responsible for the outrages. We were told 
that thereby we would so impress the Mexicans 
with our good intentions and magnanimity and 
desire for peace that they would begin to love 
us dearly. Of course, we merely incurred their 
utter contempt and turned Mexico into a hot- 
bed of anti-American and pro-German intrigue. 
The results of timidity masquerading as peace- 
ful forbearance are set forth in a recent article 
in a strong administration but stanchly pa- 
triotic newspaper, the St. Louis Republic, as 
follows: "We have twice invaded the territory 
of our neighbor to the south, withdrawing each 
time without any very definite accomplishment 
except to leave a trail of bitter feeling. We 
now have more bitter enemies in Mexico than 
in any other country except Germany." If 
we had shown strength and courage we would 
have secured Mexico's genuine respect. Benev- 
olent phrasemongering has not proved a satis- 
factory substitute for strength and courage. 
It never will so prove. It did not so prove 
with Germany. If after this war we persist 
in it, other nations will grow to regard us as 



140 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Germany and Mexico now do. The American 
pacifist has been the potent ally of the German 
militarist and the silly tool of the Hun within 
our gates. In the future we shall gain the re- 
spect and friendship of well-disposed nations 
and the respect and fear of ill-disposed nations 
by prepared strength; and professions of paci- 
fism and of general good intentions, if we fail 
to prepare our strength, will conciliate nobody, 
will make us despised by everybody, and will 
expose us to the hostility of the forces of evil 
throughout the world. 

This war will not be won by phrases. It 
will be won by the hard fighting of the fight- 
ing men at the front. And when this war has 
been won, America will not be able to keep 
the respect or even the good-will of other na- 
tions by fine phrases about internationalism, 
pacifism, a League of Nations, and the like. 
We must trust to deeds, not words; to facts, 
not phrases. We must trust to an aroused, 
unified, and intense spirit of nationalism and 
to the prepared readiness to defend our rights, 
and the rights of others, by our own hardened 
strength and courage. 

Everything we have accomplished in this 



TELL THE TRUTH 141 

war — including going into the war — has been 
due solely to courageous, constructive criticism 
of the administration, and insistence upon 
telling the truth in order to get us into the 
war, and then to make us do our duty in the 
war. 

Only truth-telling in fearless criticism forced 
our entry into the war, and forced our belated 
preparedness for the war. Only resolute ham- 
mering forced the raising of our army to some- 
thing like a proper size, and forced its being 
sent overseas. Nothing but steady criticism 
and relentless exposure put a stop to the do- 
nothing policy as regards ships, troops, rifles, 
airplanes, machine-guns, cannon, and tanks. 
Nothing but complaint and agitation brought 
some improvement in the actual management 
of the War Department. The moral awakening 
of America, and the growth in our win-the- 
war efficiency, have been due solely to the 
pressure brought on the administration by 
fearless truth-telling and constructive criticism 
from without. Nothing has done more damage 
than the persistent concealment of the facts 
and denial of the truth by the administration 
and its constant glittering prophecies, which 



142 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

were not fulfilled. It would be well for it to 
remember the recent answer of Marshal Foch 
when asked about future prospects: "Realities 
are far better than any sort of promise. It is 
useless to make promises that may give rise 
to exaggerated hopes. Nothing but realities 
count." 



CHAPTER XI 
BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 

A STUDY of the American army for the 
year succeeding our entry into the war 
is a study of the effects of broomstick 
preparedness. All who defend this type of 
preparedness are themselves, however ami- 
cable and well-meaning, broomstick apologists. 
Over eighteen months have now passed 
since we admitted that we were at war, and 
over twenty months since the Germans frankly 
began war upon us. With our immense man- 
power, wealth, and resources, the natural fight- 
ing qualities of our men and the business energy 
and the mechanical efficiency of our people, 
we have now developed a force that has made 
us a highly important factor in the war. Seven- 
teen months after we entered the war we at 
last had a sufficiency of well-trained troops to 
enable General Pershing for the first time to 
take part in the war with a separate army, an 
army such as the French had and the English 
had. But this army was still very small in 

143 



144 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

size, compared to either the French or Brit- 
ish armies. Moreover it was able to act only 
because it had obtained from our aUies the 
cannon, airplanes, tanks, machine-guns, and 
the gas necessary in modern warfare. With- 
out what we have thus obtained from our allies 
we would have been absolutely helpless. But 
the gallantry and fighting efficiency of our 
men, and the fact that several hundred thou- 
sand are now fit for use at the front, have made 
us already of very real weight against the Ger- 
mans, for when the scales are almost trembling 
in the balance a relatively small weight of elFort 
will determine the outcome. Therefore, the 
large number of well-meaning persons who are 
very forgetful, and who like to tickle their 
vanity by refusing to face what is unpleasant, 
tend already to say that our unpreparedness 
did not amount to anything after all, and that 
all things are all right, and that nobody must 
speak about the wrongs of the past. For this 
reason it is essential that our people should 
know just what our shortcomings were. 

We cannot learn about these shortcomings 
from military officers. The administration by 
it» treatment of General Wood has ren- 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 145 

dered it a work of the highest danger for any 
American army officer to tell the truth that 
ought to be told. General Wood, two years 
before we went into the war, and again one 
year before we went into the war, appeared 
before the Congressional Military Committees 
and set forth our needs. When at the end of 
last winter he returned from his stay in France, 
he told us what ought at once to be done. The 
administration in every case refused to profit 
by what he had testified, and yet in every case 
the events have made good everything he said. 
It is to General Wood that we owe primarily 
the Plattsburg officers' training-camps in 191 5 
and 1916. These Plattsburg training-camps 
did a work that cannot be overestimated, in 
providing officers; and it was the one really 
effective bit of preparation on our part. All 
that General Wood thus advised and thus did 
was of the very highest value to the country. 
Instead of rewarding him for it, the adminis- 
tration has punished him in the way hardest 
to bear for a gallant and patriotic soldier. This 
has represented not only a cruel injustice to 
him, but a deeply unpatriotic refusal to meet 
the country's needs. 



146 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Therefore, I am not at liberty to quote the 
first-hand testimony I have had as to some of 
the vital shortcomings in the administration 
of the War Department and the army during 
the first eighteen months of the war. 

But in the camps I visited I saw some things 
so evident that no harm can come to any 
officer from my speaking of them; and there 
are some things which are now matters of com- 
mon knowledge, although the War Depart- 
ment did everything it could to keep them from 
the knowledge of the people. 

In the fall of 19 17 the enormous majority 
of our men in the encampments were drilling 
with broomsticks or else with rudely whittled 
guns. As late as the beginning of December 
they had in the camps almost only wooden 
machine-guns and wooden field-cannon. In 
the camps I saw barrels mounted on sticks 
on which zealous captains were endeavoring 
to teach their men how to ride a horse. At 
that time we had one or two divisions of well- 
trained infantry in France — ^which would have 
been simply lapped up if placed against the 
army of any formidable military power. At 
that time, eight months after we had gone to 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 147 

war, the army we had gathered in the canton- 
ments had neither the rifles, the machine-guns, 
the cannon, the tanks, nor the airplanes which 
would have enabled them to make any fight 
at all against any army of any military power 
that could have landed on our shores. It 
would have been as helpless against an invading 
army as so many savages armed with stone- 
headed axes. We were wholly unable to 
defend ourselves a year after we had gone to 
war. We owed our safety only to the Enghsh, 
French, and ItaHan fleets and armies. 

The cause was our refusal to prepare in ad- 
vance. President Wilson's message of Decem- 
ber, 1914, in which he ridiculed those who ad- 
vocated preparedness, was part of the cause. 
His Presidential campaign, in 19 16, on the *'he 
kept us out of war" issue was part of the cause. 
We paid the price later with broomstick rifles, 
log-wood cannon, soldiers without shoes, and 
epidemics of pneumonia in the camps. We 
are paying the price now in shortage of coal 
and congestion of transportation, and in the 
double cost of necessary war-supplies. We 
are paying the price and shall pay the price in 
the shape of taxes and a national debt at least 



148 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

twice as large as would have been the case 
if with forethought and wisdom we had pre- 
pared in advance. We have paid the price in 
the blood of tens of thousands of gallant men. 
The refusal to prepare, and the price we now 
pay because of the refusal, stand in the rela- 
tion of cause and effect. 

I do not dwell on these facts to blame any- 
body. I dwell on them in order to wake our 
people to the necessity of learning the lesson 
they teach. In order to speed up the war it 
is absolutely necessary to tell the truth. Un- 
til Senator Chamberlain's Committee on Mili- 
tary Affairs made its investigation there was 
no change for the better in the work of the 
War Department. Until Senator Thomas's 
subcommittee investigated the airplane situa^ 
tion, the American people were kept in com- 
plete ignoi*ance of the utter breakdown of our 
air programme. Primarily this condition was 
due to the policy of unpreparedness to which 
the administration adhered during the two and 
a half years, when even the blindest ought to 
have read the lesson being taught by the great 
war. Since the war broke out the administra- 
tion has been guilty of numerous delays, of the 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 149 

appointment and retention of inefficient men, 
and of many kinds of half-heartedness in wag- 
ing the war. These have all caused much 
damage. But the prime cause was the failure 
to prepare in advance. 

The attitude of the War Department during 
the first months of the war was shown by the 
remark of one of the high officials to the effect 
that the delay of a few months was "a per- 
fectly endurable delay." This remark was 
made with all the complacency of the butter- 
fly on the fence to the toad under the harrow. 
Others paid with their blood for our delay. 
The German submarine note came on January 
31, 1917; and within the next two months an 
alert and efficient War Department would 
have had every particle of its programme 
minutely mapped out and well on the way to 
execution. As a matter of fact, nothing was 
really begun until late in August. Six months 
can be treated as "a perfectly endurable de- 
lay" only if we are content to accept the speed 
standards in war of Tiglath-Pileser and Pharaoh 
Nechoh. But the United States cannot afford 
to accept the war speed standards of the 
seventh century B. C, instead of those of the 



ISO THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

twentieth century, A. D. There is not the 
slightest use of trying to justify or excuse 
broomstick preparedness. 

I have before me a letter from a line major 
of Marines, describing the terrible fighting in 
which the Marines took part last July. I quote 
the following sentences: 

The German planes were thick in the air; they 
were in groups of from three to twenty. They 
would look us over and then we would soon get a 
pounding from their bombs. I heard men cussing 
as to where our ^1,000,000,000 worth of planes 
were. We did not see them. 

I also have before me a letter from an avia- 
tion major, written from another part of the 
front two months later, in the beginning of Sep- 
tember. It runs in part as follows: 

We still keep wondering when we are going to 
see the results of America's quantity efforts in avia- 
tion. Things are much better here now, but it 
is entirely thanks to the French. The Liberty 
engine has not begun to show up in quantity yet, 
at any rate at the front. 

Every American worth his salt feels exul- 
tant pride in the splendid courage and high effi- 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 151 

ciency of our soldiers in France. From General 
Pershing down they have made our country, 
and us who dwell therein, forever their debtors. 

It is well to pay these men the homage of 
words, but what really counts is the homage of 
deeds. It is a dreadful thing to send our fine 
and gallant boys to battle, and yet to deny 
them the formidable weapons and machines of 
war, the lack of which must be paid for by pour- 
ing out their blood like water. 

As a nation we cannot be acquitted of this 
wrong to our fighting men whom we have sent 
to the front. No finer fighting men were ever 
known, and their deeds are deeds of deathless 
honor. But our government, by its failure to 
prepare in advance and by its delay, waste, and 
mismanagement after the war began, has made 
a record that is not pleasant for Americans to 
contemplate. Let our people never forget 
that if we had chosen to prepare in advance 
we would probably have ended the war in ninety 
days after we entered it in 1917; and that if 
when General Leonard Wood returned from 
France at the close of last winter the adminis- 
tration had heeded his report and had done 
as he then advised and as every patriotic man 



152 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

of knowledge and insight then hoped, we would 
have been further advanced at the beginning 
of the summer than we are now at the end of 
the fall. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise 
in time. 

When, on February 3, we broke ofF diplomatic 
relations with Germany the war really began. 
From that moment avoidable, unwarranted 
delay was as inexcusable as it is now. The day 
before Mr. Elon Hooker had laid before the 
authorities at Washington an offer to turn over 
his entire plant to the service of the govern- 
ment, this being the plant better fitted than any 
other in the United States to undertake the 
manufacture of war gas and the development 
of new and more formidable kinds of gas on a 
gigantic scale. His request was refused. A 
year elapsed before any serious effort was made 
to undo any of the effects of the error. At the 
same time we had the means for building enor- 
mous quantities of excellent machine-guns. 
The War Department refused to avail itself of 
the opportunity and dallied for about eighteen 
months in developing a new type of gun, leav- 
ing us meanwhile without any. We dawdled in 
similar fashion over the tanks. We have not 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 153 

yet built any field-guns, and are still dependent 
upon what the French can give us. It is nec- 
essary merely to refer to the appalling delay 
in the air service where ^640,000,000 were ap- 
propriated and largely expended without secur- 
ing any tangible result whatever on the field 
of battle until we had been at war nearly a year 
and a half. 

For nearly a year after we entered the war 
our authorities behaved exactly as if they be- 
lieved that if they delayed long enough Eng- 
land and France would win the victory with- 
out us; or as if the Russian Bolshevists would 
disintegrate Germany; or as if in some other 
way, by some streak of good luck, we would 
be able to win the war without bloodshed, 
without any effort on our part. In the ship- 
ping programme and the manufacture of field- 
artillery, in the air programme, in the machine- 
gun programme, in the tank programme, in 
the gas programme — in short, as regards every 
material element necessary to win the war 
with the least loss of blood among the fighting 
men — there was the same breakdown. After a 
year of war, when the great German drive be- 
gan, our fighting army able to take part in the 



154 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

active work at the front was actually smaller 
than that of Belgium. In the next six months 
we were able to place in the field an army 
respectable in numbers and admirable in qual- 
ity; and we were able to do this only because, 
in view of the breakdown of our shipping pro- 
gramme, the British furnished their ships, so 
that 60 per cent of the tonnage used in ferrying 
our soldiers across was British. But we were 
able to furnish only the men. We had only the 
field-artillery the French furnished us. We 
got uniforms from the EngHsh. We did not 
have a single fighting-plane of American make, 
and naturally the French did not give us their 
best planes. We had very few American ma- 
chine-guns or auto rifles. We had almost no 
gas. We had almost no tanks, and those we 
did have were furnished by our allies. We now 
have a few admirable naval guns, admirably 
handled, and a number of excellent bombing 
airplanes of our own manufacture. 

The Russo-Japanese War lasted some six- 
teen months. During this time the Russian 
Government was rightly esteemed to have mis- 
managed matters. But the breakdown of our 
government for the first sixteen months after 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 155 

we went to war was far more complete than 
the breakdown of the Russian Government 
when opposed to Japan. At the end of that 
time we had some hundreds of thousands of 
fighting men, certainly unsurpassed, and per- 
haps unequalled in the world, but they had 
practically no artillery, tanks, airplanes, ma- 
chine-guns, or gas of their own. They were 
still unprepared to act as an army by them- 
selves. In other words, they would have been 
utterly helpless against any well-equipped 
modern army. After sixteen months our gov- 
ernment had failed to meet the situation even 
as well as the Russian Government had met 
its situation. The difference was that Russia 
had no allies, whereas our allies made a ram- 
part of their bodies behind which we slowly 
prepared. 

The business efficiency of our people is great. 
Its man-power is great. Its resources are enor- 
mous. Had the administration, with an eye 
single to our country's needs, devoted its whole 
energy to speeding up the war, and abandoned 
all thought of politics during the war, the peace 
of overwhelming victory would by this time 
have been won. But this was not done. Never 



iS6 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

before in our history has the administration 
in power during a war drawn party lines as 
sharply as in the present war. No one but an 
active partisan adherent of the administration 
has been given any position of the slightest 
political responsibility; and the test in the ap- 
pointment of even these, as established by 
President Wilson, in his messages concerning 
the election or re-election of congressmen, is 
loyalty to the administration rather than loy- 
alty to the country. But an immense number 
of business men, without distinction of party — 
Democrats and RepubHcans alike, men like 
Hoover, Ryan, Stettinius, Schwab, and Hur- 
ley — have come forward and rendered invalu- 
able service at a nominal salary of ^i a year, 
or something of the kind. Without distinction 
of party our best men have gone to the front 
to fight — except where, as in the case of Gen- 
eral Wood, the administration refused to use 
them. In Congress party lines have been abol- 
ished on the great issues connected with wag- 
ing the war efficiently. The Republicans, as a 
matter of fact, furnished a greater percentage 
than the Democrats of the support needed by 
the President on the most important war 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 157 

measures. Thanks to the work of Congress, 
to the work of our private citizens, and above 
all to the valor of our soldiers, we have been 
able to develop some portion of our strength; 
and although we are not at this time one-quar- 
ter as efficient in the war as we could have 
been if our leaders, without regard to politics, 
had devoted themselves in every way to speed- 
ing up the war, yet even the use of this small 
fraction of our giant strength has sufficed to 
turn the scale. 

If we do our full duty even now, the war 
may be over very soon. But it may continue 
for a long time. In any event, let our people 
remember that every disaster and every delay 
is, will be, and has been due to our people per- 
mitting the misconduct of the men in high 
political position to go unrebuked. If peace 
comes soon — and there should be no peace per- 
mitted except the peace of complete victory, 
a peace secured by the unconditional surrender 
of Germany — let our people remember that the 
unfortunate individuals made the scapegoats 
for our numerous breakdowns were not really 
to blame. It is the men in highest position 
over them who were really to blame; and these 



158 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

men were most heavily to blame for their failure 
to prepare in advance. When President Wil- 
son, a year after the sinking of the Lusitania, 
appointed Mr. Baker Secretary of War he ab- 
solutely insured all the trouble that has come 
from the breakdowns in our war programme. 
President Wilson has said, "We waited until 
every fair-minded citizen of our peace-loving 
democracy was aware that peace was imposr 
sible before we reluctantly began to prepare 
to defend ourselves"; and Secretary Baker and 
Mr. Creel, loyally supporting their chief, have 
said that they felt "delight" and "pride" in 
the fact that "we were not prepared." The 
satisfaction thus expressed and felt by the men 
responsible for our failure to prepare will not 
be shared by the mothers, the widows, and the 
orphans of the tens of thousands of gallant 
men whose deaths have been due and will be 
due to this failure. 

If there is any lesson which this war ought 
to have taught it is the priceless value of time. 
Our delay was not fatal to us, merely because 
our allies protected us. Now we have begun 
to develop a great fighting force. No nation 
has finer stuff for soldiers than America; no 



BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS 159 

nation has greater wealth; probably no other 
nation can draw on a population of such energy, 
administrative capacity, and inventive resource- 
fulness. A year after our forced entry into 
the war we began to become a ponderable mili- 
tary element; we have steadily become more 
and more formidable; and finally, I believe, we 
shall become the decisive factor in the war. 

Then there will be grave danger lest our 
vanity mislead us into forgetfulness of our 
helplessness for the first year and a half, and 
if so we shall again sink back into a condition 
of utter unpreparedness. For this reason let 
us refuse to be guilty of the folly of keeping 
silent as to the facts of the two years and a 
half preceding and of the year and a half suc- 
ceeding our entry into the war. On this mat- 
ter at least it is necessary to live up to Presi- 
dent Wilson's former desire for "pitiless pub- 
licity." 

Next time we may not find allies to defend 
us. Let Uncle Sam prepare to defend himself. 
Let him realize from the experience of the im- 
mediate past that, unless he prepares long in 
advance, he will be utterly helpless if suddenly 
menaced with war by a great military nation. 



i6o THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Broomstick preparedness is of value only from 
the political standpoint. 

Fine words will never save us from a foreign 
conqueror. Only deeds will save us; and then 
only if we prepare for these deeds in advance. 

Brag is a good dog. But Holdfast is a better. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 

THE gospel as preached nineteen hun- 
dred years ago "called sinners to re- 
pentance." The sinners who profited 
by it were those who repented. They did not 
jauntily speak of their sins as spilt milk. They 
recognized themselves as sinners; they recog- 
nized the need of repentance. Unless they 
met these three conditions, they were regarded 
as hypocrites (and hypocrites were not laughed 
at, nor excused, but scathingly denounced). If 
the sinners announced that they were proud 
of their sins or took dehght in them, or if they 
excused themselves and denied their short- 
comings, they were not regarded as having 
repented at all and were denied all fellowship 
with those who had seen the light. 

And those who summoned the sinners to re- 
pent did not tell them not to cry over spilt 
milk. On the contrary, they told them with 
emphasis that they had sinned, and that there 
i6i 



i62 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

was sore need of repentance, and that such 
sincere repentance for the past was the surest 
way to strengthen their souls against future 
repetition of their past misconduct. 

The present-day chatter against speaking 
the necessary truth about our past govern- 
mental misconduct is apt to find expression in 
a protest against "crying over spilt milk." 
The beneficiaries of the chatter noisily an- 
nounce that they feel "pride" and "delight" 
in having spilled the milk in the past, instead 
of bending their energies in repentant silence 
to mopping it up in the present. 

For two years and a half the world war 
raged and we refused to prepare. Germany 
trampled Belgium into bloody mire, but we 
refused to prepare. She sank the Lusitania 
and murdered our people wholesale upon the 
high seas, but we refused to prepare. She 
dynamited our factories at home, but we refused 
to prepare. Our government knew all about 
her plots; our governmental authorities had 
full knowledge of all she was doing, but they 
kept us ignorant and neutral and refused to 
prepare. Inert, timid, absorbed in money-get- 
ting, wx dulled our souls with sentimental 



THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 163 

rhetoric which under such conditions was nau- 
seous. Our leaders refused to take one thought 
for the terrible to-morrow or to harden a single 
fibre of our giant but flabby strength. We 
drifted into the war on a sea of fatuous phrases 
and fatuous refusals to act. And then for a 
year we waged the war with irresolute feeble- 
ness. Meanwhile the administration, through 
Mr. Baker, through Mr. Creel, through the 
President himself, have excused or denied the 
shortcomings, have announced that they re- 
garded them with pride and delight and have 
persevered in them until dragooned out of 
them by hostile criticism. Yet with these facts 
staring us in the face, there are still persons 
who regard the gospel of "not crying over spilt 
milk" as an improvement upon the gospel of 
calling sinners to repentance. 

It was not until the great German drive in 
the spring of 191 8 came within a hand's breadth 
of wrecking the Allied cause, that our people 
began to wake to the actual facts, and that the 
administration began seriously to try to per- 
form a substantial portion of its duty. By 
that time three years and nine months had 
passed since the great war began, and over 



i64 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

a year had passed since Germany forced us 
into it. 

The most terrible battle of the whole terrible 
war was raging, a battle which might readily 
have meant the winning of the war by Ger- 
many. 

It was an hour of awful trial and suffering 
and danger for our war-worn allies who in 
France were battling for us no less than for 
themselves. If shame is ever more dreadful 
than suffering, then it was a no less terrible 
hour for our country. Our allies stood with 
their backs to the wall in the fight for freedom, 
and America looked on. The free nations stood 
at bay in the cause that was ours no less than 
theirs; and after over a year of war the army 
we had sent to their aid was smaller than that 
of poor, heroic, ruined Belgium, and was hardly 
more than a twentieth the size of that which 
gallant and impoverished Italy had in the field. 
And this great, wealthy nation of ours had not 
yet furnished to our own brave troops in the 
field, cannon or tanks or airplanes, and almost 
no machine-guns, save those which we had ob- 
tained from hard-pressed France. And let our 
people remember that every gun or tank or air- 



THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 165 

plane thus made for us by hard-pressed France 
was left unmade for hard-pressed Italy. 

Our few gallant fighting men overseas had 
even then won high honor for themselves, and 
had made all other Americans forever their 
debtors. But it was a scandal and a reproach to 
this nation that they were so few and so badly 
equipped. If in this mighty battle our allies 
had failed, black infamy would have been our 
portion, because of the delay and the folly and 
the weakness and the cold, time-serving timid- 
ity of our government, to which this failure 
would have been primarily due. 

Our allies did not fail. They staved off 
defeat. They managed to hold until Pershing 
was able to put into the Hne seven or eight 
divisions sufficiently trained and of such splen- 
did natural worth that they could be used as 
shock troops — although even then these troops 
could fight only because we had obtained from 
our allies the necessary cannon, airplanes, tanks, 
and machine-guns, and although even then we 
could not put in separate army corps, our 
troops being joined in larger or smaller units 
with the French or English. But the native 
quality of our troops was such that they were 



i66 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

a factor of prime importance in the great 
counter-drive which Foch then began and 
which after over three months of victory, has 
forced Germany almost to her own borders and 
made her start her peace drive to avert un- 
conditional surrender. The government is 
now really endeavoring to send men across the 
water as rapidly as possible. It is now en- 
deavoring to speed up the ship programme. It 
is now endeavoring to hurry the airplane pro- 
gramme. It is employing big business men 
and apparently is giving them power. None 
of these things were done until Senator Cham- 
berlain's committee in the teeth of the violent 
opposition of the administration, forced some 
efficiency and some speed into the work of war. 
Few of them were done effectively until the 
German drive galvanized the administration 
into action. If these obvious things and the 
other obvious things like them had been en- 
ergetically begun a year and a half ago, the 
American army would now be in Germany as 
the dominant factor in the war. If we had be- 
gun to prepare in August, 1914, the war would 
have been over long ago, and indeed we probably 
would not have had actually to fight and an 



THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 167 

infinity of bloodshed would certainly have been 
spared. Verily, our own country and the world 
at large have paid, are paying, and will pay a 
heavy price for the milk spilt by the adminis- 
tration; and the heaviest blame rests on those 
false leaders of public thought who told the 
people not to cry over the spilt milk, instead 
of telling them to call the sinners to repentance 
and to see that the repentance was sincere 
and effective. 

Let the sinners cease exulting over their sins 
and in good faith bring forth fruits meet for 
repentance. We are now doing what we ought 
to have done over a year and a half ago. We 
are now preparing to make our overseas army 
next spring what it could have been made and 
ought to have been made last spring. But let 
us not forget that the present action of the 
administration in increasing the army furnishes 
the severest condemnation of its folly last 
spring in refusing then to do what it is now 
doing, when General Wood on his return from 
France, and when Lieutenant-General Young 
and all other competent advisers insisted upon 
the need of instantly starting to increase our 
army to five million fighting men overseas. 



i68 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

To prepare along every line for a three years' 
war offers the best chance of shortening it; and 
if it lasts three years such preparation will 
guarantee us against the necessity a year hence, 
or two or three years hence, of trying to cover 
up failure by nervously assuring one another 
that we need not cry over spilt milk. 

If those responsible for our failure, if those 
responsible for the refusal to prepare during 
the two and a half years in which we were 
vouchsafed such warning as never nation pre- 
viously, received, if those responsible for the 
sluggish feebleness with which we have acted 
since we helplessly drifted into the war— if 
these men now repented of the cruel wrong 
they have done this nation and mankind, we 
could afford to wrap their past folly and evil- 
doing in the kindly mantle of oblivion. 

But they boast of their foolishness, they 
excuse and justify it, they announce that they 
feel pride and delight in contemplating it. 
Therefore it was for us, the people, to bow our 
heads on our penitential day; for we were lag- 
gards in the battle, we let others fight in our 
quarrel, we let others pay with their shattered 
bodies for the fire in their burning souls. 



THE GOSPEL OF SPILT MILK 169 

The trumpets of the Lord sounded for Arma- 
geddon, but our hearts were not swift to an- 
swer nor our feet jubilant; coldly we at home 
watched others die that we might live. Our 
rulers were supple and adroit; but they were 
not mighty of soul. They showed that they 
would not lead us, and would even stand in 
front only if we forced them forward. 

Overseas our fighting men, by their valor 
and their suffering, are now atoning for the 
manifold failures in the past of our rulers at 
home. Now at last we can hold our heads 
aloft, because these, our sons and brothers, have 
won immortal honor, and have established 
records of efficient and heroic valor which give 
our nation the same right which the Allied 
nations already had to cherish forever sorrowful 
but glorious memories of this world war. But 
it behooves us to see that other millions of our 
fighting men stand beside them, and that they 
have every weapon and war machine necessary 
to enable them to win the war with the least 
expenditure of their gallant blood. Spilt milk 
in the past has meant spilt blood in the pres- 
ent. Spilt milk in the present will mean more 
spilt blood in the future. 



170 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

This is the reason why we, the American 
people, must search our own hearts and with 
unflinching will insist that from now on not a 
day, not an hour shall be wasted until our 
giant but soft and lazy strength is hardened, 
until we ourselves take the burden from the 
shoulders of others, until we pay whatever 
price our past shortcomings demand, and with 
heads uplifted and spirit undaunted stride for- 
ward to the great goal of the peace of victorious 
right. 



APPENDIX A 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Most, but not all, of the material herein con- 
tained has appeared during the present year in the 
Metropolitan Magatine^ in the Kansas City Star, 
in the Philadelphia North American, in the New 
York Tribune, and in certain speeches. 

Four years ago, in the articles which soon after- 
ward were gathered into book form under the title 
of "America and the World War," I wrote: 

The great danger to peace, so far as this country is 
concerned, arises from such pacifists as those who have 
made and applauded our recent all-inclusive arbitration 
treaties. . . . These persons may succeed in impressing 
foreign nations with the belief that they represent our 
people ... (if so, there will follow) long-drawn war. . . . 
It is those among us who would go to the front in such 
event — as . . . my four sons would go — who are the really 
far-sighted and earnest friends of peace. We desire 
measures taken in the real interest of peace, because we 
who at need would fight, but who earnestly hope never 
to be forced to fight, have most at stake in keeping peace. 
... In such a war the prime fact to be remembered is 
that the men really responsible for it would not be those 
who would pay the penalty. The ultrapacifists are rarely 
men who go to battle. Their fault or their folly would 
be expiated by the blood of countless thousands of plain 
and decent American citizens. 
171 



172 APPENDIX 

Events have made good precisely what I thus 
wrote. The leading pacifists of four years ago, and 
their sons and sons-in-law, are rarely to be found 
in the fighting line at the front. It is the men who 
then advocated preparedness who now pay for the 
failure to prepare and for the folly of some of our 
leaders, and the political unscrupulousness of others. 



APPENDIX B 

DISPOSITION OF THE NOBEL PEACE 
PRIZE FUND 

August 22nd, 191 8. 
My dear Congressman Gallivan: 

In accordance with the terms of the Congres- 
sional resolution introduced by you, in the House 
of Representatives, and by Senator Johnson, acting 
for Senator Williams, in the Senate, Secretary Red- 
field for the Commission returned to me the Nobel 
Peace Prize Fund. The securities when sold, plus 
the cash in hand, amounted to ^45,482.83. I have 
disposed of this sum as follows: 

To the American Red Cross, through the Trea- 
surer, Mr. John Skelton Williams ^6,900.00 

The American Red Cross, and possibly some 
other war charities or war activities will 
receive further sums of money from my 
royalties on certain scenarios of motion 
pictures to be shortly produced by the 
McClure Company; all the royalties I re- 
ceive from the pictures in question during 
the period of the war will be thus used. 

To Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., now working 

in the Y. M. C. A. in France 5,000.00 

As Mrs. Roosevelt is working in the Y. M. C. A. 
173 



174 APPENDIX 

I suppose that some or most of the money 
will be used in connection therewith; but 
the disposal is absolutely at her discretion. 

To the Young Men's Christian Association Na- 
tional War Work Council, through the trea- 
surer, Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge 4,ocx).oo 

To the Knights of Columbus War Activities 
Committee, through the treasurer, Mr. Wil- 
liam J. Mulligan 4,000.00 

To the Jewish Welfare Board, for War Activities, 

through the treasurer, Mr. Walter E. Sachs . . 4,000.00 

To the Salvation Army War Fund, treasurer 

Mr. G. S. Reinhardsen 4,000.00 

I have sent this check through Major Atkins, 
who has been doing admirable work in the 
battalion of the 26th Infantry in which my 
sons Theodore Jr. and Archibald have been 
serving. 

To the Young Women's Christian Association 
War Work Council, Colored, through Mrs. 

Henry P. Davison 4,000.00 

I have asked that Miss Eva Bolles be con- 
sulted in the disbursal of this item. My 
wife and I were very much struck with the 
work of Miss Bolles in connection with the 
Colored Hostess House at Camp Upton; 
and I have requested that the money be used 
for the hostess houses for colored troops and 
in work among colored women and girls in 
and about the camps and cantonments. 



APPENDIX I7S 

To Miss Emily Tyler Carow, at Porto Maurizo, 
Italy, for work in connection with the Italian 

Red Cross 1,000.00 

I send this sum merely as a token of my ad- 
miration of the high gallantry and efficiency 
of Italy's action. 

To Langdon Warner, acting American Vice- 
Consul at Harbin and Vladivostock, for the 
Czecho-Slovaks, the extraordinary nature of 
whose great and heroic feat is literally unparal- 
leled, so far as I know in ancient or modern 

warfare 1,000.00 

In this case, as in all the cases that follow, the 
value of the money contribution amounts 
to so little that it seems hardly worth send- 
ing; but the money was given to me by the 
Nobel Peace Prize Committee for my action 
in connection with the Peace of Portsmouth, 
which closed the Russo-Japanese War; and 
I wish to use it in part to show my admira- 
tion for the high heroism of the peoples who 
have done most and suffered most in this 
great war to secure liberty for all those na- 
tions, big or little, which lead self-respecting 
and orderly lives, and act justly and fairly 
by others. 

To Madame Major Botchkareva, for use as she 
deems wise, as a token of my respect for those 
Russians who have refused to follow the Bol- 
shevists in their betrayal to Germany of Rus- 
sia, of the AUies, and of the cause of liberty 
throughout the world l,ooo.oo 

To Herbert C. Hoover, for use in Belgium 1,000.00 



176 APPENDIX 

To the Belgian Minister, for use among the Bel- 
gian refugees in Holland 1,000.00 

In Holland the burden of caring for the Bel- 
gian victims of the German horror has been 
very heavy; I suggest, but do not direct, 
that the money be expended through the 
committee to which Miss Van der Flier be- 
longs. 

To the Servian Minister, for the Servian sufferers 1,000.00 

To Paul Shimmon for use among the Armenians 

and Assyrian Christians 1,000.00 

I send this through Mr. Shimmon because so 
far as I know he has never sought to excuse 
or justify what I regard as our inexcusable 
dereliction in duty in having failed to de- 
clare war on Turkey, and therefore in having 
failed to play a manly part in the effort per- 
manently to remedy the hideous wrongs of 
the subjects of the Turk in the only really 
effective way, by destroying Turkish rule. 

To M. L. Mirman, Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, 
the lamentable sufferings of the people of 
whose prefecture happen to have been brought 
intimately before us 500.00 

To Mrs. Mary Cadwalader Jones, for further 

similar work in France 500.00 

To Count Ishii, the Japanese Ambassador, for 

the Japanese Red Cross 500.00 

The Japanese Red Cross, like the American 
Red Cross, has raised large sums of money 
for use in the Allied countries; I send this 



APPENDIX 177 

merely as a very slight token of my admira- 
tion for the part the Japanese people have 
taken in this war. 

To Leslie M. Tarlton, Nairobi, for any war ac- 
tivity, or war charity in Uganda or British 

East Africa 500.00 

I was in Africa with Mr. Tarlton, who is an 
Australian. I send this merely as a token 
of my admiration of what has been done in 
this war by the Canadians, Australians, New 
Zealanders and Africanders, both of Boer 
and British blood. 

To Mrs. Stewart Jobson for reconstruction work 

for wounded soldiers in England 500.00 

To Judge Joseph L. Nunan, of Georgetown, 
Demerara, for wounded soldiers and their 

families in Ireland 500.OO 

I send this through Mr. Nunan because he be- 
lieves in Home Rule within the" Empire, and 
stands uncompromisingly for prosecuting the 
war against Germany with all possible effi- 
ciency until the enemy is completely over- 
thrown. 

To Henry P. Davison, to be used when possible 

for the Roumanians 500.OO 

To Henry P. Davison, to be used when possible 

for the Montenegrins 500.00 

To Robert M. Thompson, for the Comforts Com- 
mittee of the Navy League 500.00 



178 APPENDIX 

To Speaker Champ Clark, for war activities or 

charities 500.00 

I suggest but do not stipulate that this be used 
in Missouri. 

To Mrs. James A. GalUvan, for war activities 

or charities 500.00 

I suggest but do not stipulate that this be 

used in Mrs. Gallivants own neighborhood 

in Massachusetts. 

To Mrs. John A. Williams, for similar use 500.00 

I suggest but do not stipulate that this be 
used in Mississippi. 

To Mrs. Hiram Johnson for similar use 500.000 

I suggest but do not stipulate that this be 
used in California. 

For cabling and other expenses in connection 

therewith 82.83 

Total $45,482.83 

I wish to express my obligations to Secretary 
Redfield and his associates for the promptness with 
which they acted. 

Faithfully yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Hon. James A. Gallivan, 
House of Representatives, 
Washington, D. C. 



APPENDIX C 
PUT THE BLAME WHERE IT BELONGS 

Under the above heading I wrote to Senator 
Poindexter concerning the misconduct of the ad- 
ministration — especially through the action of 
Messrs. Burleson and Creel, and the handling of 
the Department of Justice and the War Depart- 
ment — in failing to act efficiently against German 
spies and pro-German traitors here at home, and 
in failing to proceed against powerful newspapers 
which supported Mr. Wilson personally although 
conducting an anti-ally or anti-war, and therefore 
anti-American and pro-German propaganda, while 
mercilessly interfering with the freedom of speech 
and with the freedom of the press as regards non- 
seditious and loyal papers which were politically op- 
posed to the administration and which the adminis- 
tration desired to browbeat. This letter was put 
into the record by Senator Poindexter and has 
been reproduced as an appendix in Mr. James A. B. 
Scherer's admirable volume entitled "The Nation 
at War." 

I showed that the great and powerful Hearst 
newspapers had been left unmolested by the ad- 
ministration (by administration I mean President 
Wilson and those intimate high subordinates and 
179 



i8o APPENDIX 

advisers of his who are his especial agents and for 
whose acts he must accept full responsibility), and 
had been helped by the administration through 
action which was not merely of political but of 
financial consequence to them; whereas weak 
papers and papers to which the administration 
objected on political grounds had been bullied and 
interfered with and even practically suppressed. I 
gave the facts in these and other cases in detail; 
and the administration never ventured to question 
these facts — because the members of the adminis- 
tration well knew that I was telling the absolute 
truth, and that no one could truthfully or success- 
fully dispute what I had said. 

The simple truth is that never in our history 
has any other administration during a great war 
played politics of the narrowest personal and par- 
tisan type as President Wilson has done; and one 
of the features of this effort has been the careful 
and studied effort to mislead and misinform the 
public through information sedulously and copiously 
furnished them by government officials. An even 
worse feature has been the largely successful effort 
to break down freedom of speech and the freedom 
of the press by government action. Much of this 
action has been taken under the guise of attacking 
disloyalty; but it has represented action, not against 
those who were disloyal to the nation, but against 
those who disagreed with or criticised the President 
for failure in the performance of duty to the na- 



APPENDIX i8i 

tion. The action of the government against real 
traitors, and against German spies and agents, has 
been singularly weak and ineffective. The chief 
of the Secret Service said that there were a quarter 
of a million German spies in this country. Senator 
Overmann put the number at a larger figure; but 
not one has been shot or hung, and relatively few 
have been interfered with in any way. The real 
vigor of the administration has been directed against 
honest critics who have endeavored to force it to 
speed up the war and to act with prompt efficiency 
against Germany. 

In my letter to Senator Polndexter I quoted an 
article I had written which appeared in the Metro- 
politan Magazine for April, 191 8. It runs as fol- 
lows: 

LINCOLN AND FREE SPEECH 

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does 
not mean to stand by the President or any other public 
official save exactly to the degree in which he himself 
stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him in 
so far as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic 
not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency 
or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. 
In either event, It Is unpatriotic not to tell the truth — 
whether about the President or about any one else — save 
In the rare cases where this would make known to the 
enemy Information of military value which would other- 
wise be unknown to him. 

Sedition, in the legal sense, means to betray the govern- 
ment, to give aid and comfort to the enemy, or to counsel 



1 82 APPENDIX 

resistance to the laws or to measures of government having 
the force of law. There can be conduct morally as bad 
as legal sedition which yet may not be violation of law. 
The President — any President — can by speech or action 
(by advocating an improper peace or improper submis- 
sion to national wrong) give aid and comfort to the public 
enemy as no one else in the land can do, and yet his con- 
duct, however damaging to the country, is not seditious; 
and although if public sentiment is sufficiently aroused 
he can be impeached, such course is practically impos- 
sible. 

One form of servility consists in a slavish attitude — 
of the kind incompatible with self-respecting manliness — 
toward any person who is powerful by reason of his office 
or position. Servility may be shown by a public servant 
toward the profiteering head of a large corporation, or 
toward the anti-American head of a big labor organiza- 
tion. It may also be shown in peculiarly noxious and un- 
American form by confounding the President or any other 
official with the country and shrieking "stand by the 
President," without regard to whether, by so acting, we 
do or do not stand by the country. 

A distinguished Federal judge recently wrote me as 
follows : 

"Last November it seemed as if the American people 
were going to be converted into a hallelujah chorus, whose 
only function in government should be to shout 'Halle- 
lujah!' 'Hallelujah!' for everything that the Adminis- 
tration did or failed to do. Any one who did not join 
that chorus was liable to imprisonment for treason or 
sedition. 

"I hope that we shall soon have recovered our sense 
as well as our liberty. 

"The authors of the first amendment to the Federal 
Constitution guaranteeing the right of assembly and of 
freedom of speech and of the press did not thus safeguard 



APPENDIX 183 

those rights for the sake alone of persons who were to 
enjoy them, but even more because they knew that the 
RepubHc which they were founding could not be worked 
on any other basis. Since Marshall tried Burr for treason 
it has been clear that that crime cannot be committed 
by words, unless one acts as a spy, or gives advice to the 
enemy of military or naval operations. It cannot be com- 
mitted by statements reflecting upon officers or measures 
of government. 

*' Sedition is different. Any one who directly advises 
or counsels resistance to measures of government is guilty 
of sedition. That, however, ought to be clearly distin- 
guished from discussion of the wisdom or folly of measures 
of government, or the honesty or competency of public 
officers. That is not sedition. It is within the protection 
of the first amendment. The electorate cannot be quali- 
fied to perform its duty in removing incompetent officers 
and securing the repeal of unwise laws unless those ques- 
tions may be freely discussed. 

*'The right to say wise things necessarily implies the 
right to say foolish things. The answer to foolish speech 
is wise speech and not force. The Republic is founded 
upon the faith that if the American people are permitted 
freely to hear foolish and wise speech, a majority will 
choose the wise. If that faith is not justified the Republic 
is based on sand. John Milton said it all in his defense 
of freedom of the press: 'Let truth and error grapple. 
Who ever knew truth to be beaten in a fair fight.?' " 

Abraham Lincoln was in Congress while Polk was Presi- 
dent, during the Mexican War. The following extracts 
from his speeches, during war-time, about the then Presi- 
dent ought to be illuminating to those persons who do 
not understand that one of the highest and most patriotic 
duties to be performed in his country at this time is to 
tell the truth whenever it becomes necessary in order 
to force our government to speed up the war. It would, 



1 84 APPENDIX 

for example, be our highest duty to tell it if at any time 
we became convinced that only thereby could we shame 
our leaders out of hypocrisy and prevent the betrayal 
of human rights by peace talk of the ^ind which bewilders 
and deceives plain people. 

These quotations can be found on pages lOO to 146 of 
volume I of "Lincoln's Complete Works," by Nicolay 
and Hay. 

In a speech on January 12, 1848, Lincoln justified him- 
self for voting in favor of a resolution censuring the Presi- 
dent for his action prior to and during the war (which 
was still going on). He examines the President's official 
message of justification and says, "that, taking for true 
all the President states as facts, he falls far short of provr 
ing his justification, and that the President would have 
gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small 
matter that the truth would not permit him." He says 
that part of the message "is from beginning to end the 
sheerest deception." He then asks the President to an- 
swer certain questions, and says, "Let him answer fully, 
fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not 
with arguments. Let him remember that he sits where 
Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer. as 
Washington would answer. Let him attempt no evasion, 
no equivocation." In other words, Lincoln says that he 
does not wish rhetoric or fine phrases or glittering state- 
ments that contradict one another and each of which has 
to be explained with a separate key or adroit and subtle 
special pleading and constant reversal of positions pre- 
viously held, but straightforward and consistent adherence 
to the truth. He continues that he "m^ore than suspects'* 
that the President "is deeply conscious of being in the 
wrong; that he feels that" innocent blood "is crying to 
heaven against him"; that one of the best generals had 
"been driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, by the Presi- 
dent" for insisting upon speaking unpalatable truths 



APPENDIX i8s 

about the length of time the war would take (and there- 
fore the need of full preparedness); and ends by saying 
that the army has done admirably, but that the President 
has bungled his work and "knows not where he is. He 
is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed 
man. God grant he may be able to show there is not some- 
thing about his conscience more painful than all his men- 
tal perplexity.'' 

Remember that this is Lincoln speaking, in war-time, 
of the President. The general verdict of history has justi- 
fied him. But it is impossible to justify him and not 
heartily to condemn the persons who in our time endeavor 
to suppress truth telling of a far less emphatic type than 
■Lincoln's. 

Lincoln had to deal with various critics of the "stand 
by the President" t3^pe. To one he answers that "the 
only alternative is to tell the truth or to lie," and that 
he would not "skulk" on such a question. He explains 
that the President's supporters "are untiring in their 
efforts to make the impression that all who vote supplies 
or take part in the war do of necessity approve the Presi- 
dent's conduct," but that he (Lincoln) and his associates 
sharply distinguished between the two and voted supplies 
and men but "denounced the President's conduct" and 
"condemned the administration." He stated that to give 
the President the power demanded for him by certain peo- 
ple would "place the President where kings have always 
stood." In touching on what we should now speak of as 
rhetoric, he says, "The honest laborer digs coal at about 
seventy cents a day, while the President digs abstrac- 
tions at about seventy dollars a day. The coal is clearly 
worth more than the abstractions, and yet what a mon- 
strous inequality in the price !" He emphatically protests 
against permitting the President "to take the whole of 
legislation into his hands" — surely a statement applying 
exactly to the present situation. To the President's servile 



i86 APPENDIX 

party supporters he makes a distinction which also readily 
applies at the present day, "The distinction between the 
cause of the President . . . and the cause of the coun- 
try . . . you cannot perceive. To you the President 
and the country seem to be all one. . . . We see the 
distinction clearly enough.'* 

This last statement was the crux of the matter then 
and is the crux of the matter now. We hold that our 
loyalty is due solely to the American Republic, and to 
all our public servants exactly in proportion as they ef- 
ficiently and faithfully serve the Republic. Our oppo- 
nents, in flat contradiction of Lincoln's position, hold 
that our loyalty is due to the President, not the coun- 
try; to one man, the servant of the people, instead of 
to the people themselves. In practice they adopt the 
fetishism of all believers in absoluiism, for every man 
who parrots the cry of "stand by the President" without 
adding the proviso "so far as he serves the Republic" takes 
an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart 
royalist who championed the doctrine that the king could 
do no wrong. • No self-respecting and intelligent freeman 
can take such an attitude. 

The Wisconsin Legislature has just set forth the proper 
American doctrine, as follows: 

"The people of the State of Wisconsin always have 
stood and always will stand squarely behind the National 
Government in all things which are essential to bring 
the present war to a successful end, and we condemn Sena- 
tor Robert La FoUette and all others who have failed to 
see the righteousness of our Nation's cause, who have 
failed to support our Government in matters vital to the 
winning of the war, and we denounce any attitude or ut- 
terance of theirs which has tended to incite sedition among 
the people of our country." 

In view of the recent attitude of the administration as 
expressed through the Attorney-General and Postmaster- 



APPENDIX 187 

General I commend to its attention the utterances of 
Abraham Lincoln in 1848 and of the Wisconsin Legisla- 
ture in 1918. The administration's warfare against Ger- 
man spies and American traitors has been feeble. The 
government has achieved far less in this direction than 
has been achieved by a few of our newspapers and by- 
various private individuals. This failure is aggravated 
by such action as was threatened against the Metro- 
politan Magazine. The Metropolitan — and the present 
writer — have stood and will continue to stand, "squarely 
behind the National Government in all things which 
are essential to bring the present war to a successful 
end** and to support "the righteousness of the Nation's 
cause.'* We w^ll stand behind the country at every 
point, and we will at every point either support or oppose 
the administration precisely in proportion as it does or 
does not with efficiency and single-minded devotion serve 
the country. 

From this position we will not be driven by any abuse 
of power or by any effort to make us not the loyal servants 
of the American people, but the cringing tools of a man 
who at the moment has power. 

The administration has in some of its actions on vital 
points shown great inefficiency (as proved by Senator 
Chamberlain's committee) and on other points has been 
guilty of conduct toward certain peoples wholly incon- 
sistent with its conduct toward other peoples and wholly 
inconsistent with its public professions as regards all in- 
ternational conduct. It cannot meet these accusations, 
for they are truthful, and to try to suppress the truth 
by preventing the circulation of the Metropolitan Maga- 
zine is as high-handed a defiance of liberty and justice 
as anything done by the Hohenzollerns or the Romanoffs. 
Such action is intolerable. Contrast the leniency shown 
by the government toward the grossest offenses against 
the nation with its eagerness to assail any one who tells 



1 88 APPENDIX 

unpleasant truths about the administration. The Hearst 
papers play the German game when they oppose the war, 
assail our AlUes, and clamor for an inconclusive peace, 
and they play the German game when they assail the men 
who truthfully point out the shortcomings which, unless 
corrected, will redound to Germany's advantage and 
our terrible disadvantage. But the administration has 
taken no action against the Hearst papers. The Metro- 
politan Magazine has supported the war, has championed 
every measure to speed up the war and to make our 
strength effective, and has stood against every proposal 
for a peace without victory. But the administration acts 
against the magazine that in straightforward American 
fashion has championed the war. Such discrimination 
is not compatible with either honesty or patriotism. It 
means that the administration is using the great power 
of the government to punish honest criticism of its short- 
comings, while it accepts support of and apology for these 
shortcomings as an offset to action against the war and, 
therefore, against the nation. Conduct of this kind is 
a grave abuse of official power. 

Whatever the administration does, I shall continue 
to act in the future precisely as I have acted in the past. 
When a senator like Mr. Chamberlain in some great 
m.atter serves the country better than does the adminis- 
tration, I shall support that senator; and when a senator 
like Mr. La FoUette perseveres in the course followed by 
the administration before it reversed itself in February, 
1917, I shall oppose him and to that extent support the 
administration in its present position. I shall continue 
to support the administration in every such action as 
floating the liberty loans, raising the draft army, or send- 
ing our troops abroad. I shall continue truthfully to 
criticise any flagrant acts of incompetency by the ad- 
ministration, such as the failure in shipping matters and 
the breakdown of the War Department during the last 



APPENDIX 189 

fourteen months, when it appears that such truthful criti- 
cism offers the only chance of remedying the wrong. I 
shall support every official from the President down who 
does well, and shall oppose every such official who does 
ill. I shall not put the personal comfort of the President 
or of any other public servant above the welfare of the 
country. 

I contemptuously refuse to recognize any American 
adaptation of the German doctrine of lese-majesty. I 
am concerned only with the welfare of my beloved coun- 
try and with the effort to beat down the German horror 
in the interest of , the orderly freedom of all the nations 
of mankind. If the administration does the work of war 
with ail possible speed and efficiency, and stands for pre- 
paredness as a permanent policy, and heartily supports 
our allies to the end, and insists upon complete victory 
as a basis for peace, I shall heartily support it. If the 
administration moves in the direction of an improper 
peace, of the peace of defeat and of cowardice, or if it 
wages war feebly and timidly, I shall oppose it and shall 
endeavor to wake the American people to their danger. 

I hold that only in this way can I act as patriotism 
bids me act. I hold that only in this way can I serve in 
even the slightest degree the cause of America, of the 
Allies, and of liberty; and that only thus can I aid in 
thwarting Germany's effort to establish a world tyranny. 



APPENDIX D 
THE TERMS OF PEACE 

ADDRESS AT LAFAYETTE DAY EXERCISES, ALDER- 
MANIC CHAMBERS, NEW YORK CITY, SEPTEMBER 
6th, 191 8, BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Lafayette Day commemorates the services ren- 
dered to America in the Revolution by France. I 
wish to insist with all possible emphasis that in the 
present war France and England and Italy and the 
other Allies have rendered us similar services. The 
French at the battle of the Marne four years ago, 
and at Verdun, and the British at Ypres — in short, 
the French, the English, the Italians, the Belgians, 
the Serbians have been fighting for us when they 
were fighting for themselves. Our army on the 
other side is now repaying in part our debt, and 
next year we have every reason to hope, and we 
must insist, that the fighting army in France from 
the United States shall surpass in numbers the 
fighting army in France, of either France or Eng- 
land. It is now time — and it long has been time 
— for America to bear her full share of the common 
burden, the burden borne by all the AlHes in this 
great war for liberty and justice. 

We must win the war as speedily as possible. 
190 



APPENDIX 191 

But we must set ourselves to fight it through no 
matter how long it takes, with the resolute deter- 
mination to accept no peace until, no matter at 
what cost, we win the peace of overwhelming vic- 
tory. The peace that we win must guarantee full 
reparation for the awful cost of life and treasure 
which the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzol- 
lerns has inflicted on the entire world; and this rep- 
aration must take the form of action that will ren- 
der it impossible for Germany to repeat her colossal 
wrong-doing, Germany has been able to wage this 
fight for world dominion because she has subdued 
to her purpose her vassal allies, Austria, Turkey, 
and Bulgaria. Serbia and Roumania must have 
restored to them what Bulgaria has taken from them. 
The Austrian and Turkish Empires must both be 
broken up, all the subject peoples liberated, and the 
Turk driven from Europe. We do not intend that 
German or Magyar shall be oppressed by others, 
but neither do we intend that they shall oppress 
and domineer over others. France must receive 
back Alsace and Lorraine. Belgium must be re- 
stored and indemnified. Italian Austria must be 
restored to Italy, and Roumanian Hungary to Rou- 
mania. The heroic Czech-Slovaks must be made 
into an independent commonwealth. The southern 
Slavs must be united in a great Jugo-Slav common- 
wealth. Poland as a genuinely independent com- 
monwealth must receive back Austrian and Prussian 
Poland, as well as Russian Poland, and have her 



192 APPENDIX 

coast line on the Baltic. Lithuania, the Baltic 
Provinces of Russia, Ukrania, and Finland must be 
guaranteed their independence, and no part of the 
ancient empire of Russia left under the German 
yoke, or subject in any way to German influence. 
Northern Schleswig should go back to the Danes. 
Britain and Japan should keep the colonies they 
have conquered. Armenia must be freed, Palestine 
made a Jewish state, the Greeks guaranteed their 
rights, and the Syrians Hberated — all of them, Mo- 
hammedans, Jews, Druses, and Christians, being 
guaranteed an equal liberty of religious belief, and 
required to work out their independence on the 
basis of equal political and civil rights for all 
creeds. 

It is sometimes announced that part of the peace 
agreement must be a League of Nations, which will 
avert all war for the future, and put a stop to the 
need of this nation preparing its own strength for 
its own defense. Many of the adherents of this 
idea grandiloquently assert that they intend to 
supplant nationalism by internationalism. 

In deciding upon proposals of this nature it be- 
hooves our people to remember that competitive 
rhetoric is a poor substitute for the habit of reso- 
lutely looking facts in the face. Nothing in the 
world can alter facts. Patriotism stands in na- 
tional matters as love of family does in private life. 
Nationalism corresponds to the love a man bears 
for his wife and children. Internationalism corre- 



APPENDIX 193 

Spends to the feeling he has for his neighbors gen- 
erally. The sound nationalist is the only type of 
really helpful internationalist, precisely as in private 
relations it is the man who is most devoted to his 
own wife and children who is apt, in the long run, 
to be the most satisfactory neighbor. To substitute 
internationalism for nationalism means to do away 
with patriotism, and is as vicious and as profoundly 
demoralizing as to put promiscuous devotion to all 
other persons in the place of steadfast devotion to a 
man's own family. Either effort means the atrophy 
of robust morality. The man who loves other 
countries as much as his own stands on a level with 
the man who loves other women as much as he loves 
his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as 
the other. The professional pacifist and the pro- 
fessional internationalist are equally undesirable 
citizens. The American pacifist has in actual fact 
shown himself to be the tool and ally of the Ger- 
man militarist. The professional internationalist 
is a man who, under a pretense of diffuse attach- 
ment for everybody hides the fact that in reality 
he is incapable of doing his duty by anybody. 

We Americans should abhor all wrong-doing to 
other nations. We ought always to act fairly and 
generously by other nations. But we must remem- 
ber that our first duty is to be loyal and patriotic 
citizens of our own nation, of America. These two 
facts should always be in our minds in dealing with 
any proposal for a League of Nations. By all means 



194 APPENDIX 

let us be loyal to great ideals. But let us remem- 
ber that, unless we show common sense in action, 
loyalty in speech will amount to considerably less 
than nothing. 

Test the proposed future League of Nations so 
far as concerns proposals to disarm, and to trust to 
anything except our own strength for our own de- 
fense, by what the nations are actually doing at the 
present time. Any such league would have to de- 
pend for its success upon the adhesion of the nine 
nations which are actually or potentially the most 
powerful military nations, and these nine nations 
include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia. 
The first three have recently and repeatedly vio- 
lated, and are now actively and continuously vio- 
lating, not only every treaty, but every rule of civil- 
ized warfare and of international good faith. Dur- 
ing the last year Russia, under the dominion of the 
Bolshevists, has betrayed her aUies, has become the 
tool of the German autocracy, and has shown such 
utter disregard of her national honor and plighted 
word, and her international duties, that she is now 
in external affairs the passive tool and ally of her 
brutal conqueror, Germany. What earthly use is 
it to pretend that the safety of the world would be 
secured by a League in which these four nations 
would be among the nine leading partners ? Long 
years must pass before we can again trust any 
promises these four nations make. Any treaty of 
any kind or sort which we make with them should 



APPENDIX 195 

be made with the full understanding that they will 
cynically repudiate it whenever they think it to 
their interest to do so. Therefore, unless our folly 
is such that it will not depart from us until we are 
brayed in a mortar, let us remember that any such 
treaty will be worthless unless our own prepared 
strength renders it unsafe to break it. 

After the war the wrong-doers will be so punished 
and exhausted that they may for a number of years 
wish to keep the peace. But the surest way to 
make them keep the peace in the future is to pun- 
ish them heavily now. And don't forget that China 
is now useless as a prop to a League of Peace, simply 
because she lacks effective military strength for her 
own defense. 

Let us support any reasonable plan, whether in the 
form of a League of Nations or in any other shape, 
which bids fair to lessen the probable number of 
future wars, and to Hmit their scope.^ But let us 
laugh out of court any assertion that any such plan 
will guarantee peace and safety to the foolish, weak 

^ In my book already alluded to, published nearly four years 
ago under the title "America and the World War," there will 
be found what so far as I know is the most feasible plan for 
actually putting into effect such a League of Nations to enforce 
peace. What I therein wrote on the subject is sound doctrine 
to-day; and if what I therein wrote (in October, November, and 
December, 1914) as to performing our international duty, and 
as to preparedness, had been acted upon by the administration 
at Washington, this war would long have been over, we would 
now have the peace of right and justice, and incalculable blood- 
shed would have been saved. 



196 APPENDIX 

or timid creatures who have not the will and the 
power to prepare for their own defense. Support 
any such plan which is honest and reasonable. But 
support it as an addition to, and never as a substi- 
tute for, the policy of preparing our own strength 
for our own defense. To follow any other course 
would turn this country into the China of the Occi- 
dent. We cannot guarantee for ourselves or our 
children peace without effort, or safety without ser- 
vice and sacrifice. We must prepare both our souls 
and our bodies, in virile fashion, alike to secure 
justice for ourselves and to do justice to others. 
Only thus can we secure our own national self- 
respect. Only thus can we secure the respect of 
other nations and the power to aid them when they 
seek to do well. 

In sum, then, I shall be delighted to support the 
movement for a League to Enforce Peace, or for 
a League of Nations, if it is developed as a supple- 
ment to, and not a substitute for, the preparation of 
our own strength. I believe that this preparation 
should be by the introduction in this country of the 
principle of universal training and universal service, 
as practised in Switzerland, and modified, of course, 
both along the lines indicated in Australia and in 
accordance with our own needs. There will be no 
taint of Prussian militarism in such a system. It 
will merely mean ability to fight for self-defense 
in a great democracy in which law, order, and lib- 
erty are to prevail. 



APPENDIX E 

STRAIGHT-OUT AMERICANISM 

I cannot resist putting in the following letter, be- 
cause it shows just what Americanism demands in 
the face of Germany at this time, and because it 
shows what a thoroughgoing American the average 
young American of German parentage or descent 
is — for the gallant young soldier who writes this 
letter is typical of the hundreds of thousands of 
other gallant young American soldiers, in whole or 
in part of German blood — and typical of all the mil- 
lions of other young American soldiers, Protestant, 
Catholic, and Jew, of old native American stock, or 
of Irish, English, Scandinavian, Slavonic, French, 
Italian parentage. 

The writer of the letter is Lieutenant Earl B. 
Mahle, a second lieutenant of a machine-gun com- 
pany, who had been gassed in battle. The letter 
is written from a hospital, on July 20, 19 18. It was 
addressed to his uncle, the Reverend W. E. Mahle, 
of Blooming Grove, Minnesota. It runs in part as 
follows : 

In your letter you asked a lot of questions the like of 
which you say I have to answer when I get back. I see 
no objection in answering a few of them now. 

You wonder how we feel when given the opportunity 
197 



198 APPENDIX 

to mow them down like grass as they advance. I know 
just what you are thinking when you ask that question. 
I used to think that I would have to reconstitute my ideals, 
allow them to descend to a lower plane, in order to derive 
any satisfaction from even killing the enemy in battle. 
Now I admire the man who asks the doctor to patch him 
up a bit so that he can go out and get a few more "boches" 
before they finish him. Why shouldn't we derive some 
satisfaction at being able to help do away with a bre'ed 
that cannot deal honestly, but practices deception at 
every turn; a breed that delights in flying above a pro- 
cession of innocent women and children refugees, and 
shooting them down like dogs with the aviator's machine- 
gun; that will swoop down upon a Red Cross hospital 
tent, and deliberately inflict wounds on those already 
terribly wounded, and deliberately shoot down those 
beautiful souls, the Red Cross nurses, as they minister 
to those who are suffering; that practices the bombing 
of hospitals, and uses its own Red Cross hospital tents as 
a camouflage for ammunition dumps; that after the battle 
is over, deliberately shoots down our Red Cross personnel 
as they make an attempt to bring help to the wounded; 
a breed that sees nothing sacred in womanhood, that has 
no religion but its own desires, and knows no law but its 
own passions. Really I do not think even the most ex- 
acting of persons could have any compunctions of con- 
science about shooting down the class of people we have 
as our enemy. I have a firm conviction that our nation 
has been divinely called or favored to show to Germany 
and her allies that they cannot continue in their criminal 
policy indefinitely without answering for all the suflFering 
and devastation that has been caused. After seeing what 
I have I am firmly convinced that our dead will not have 
died in vain, that those Americans who have lost loved 
ones in this war should not mourn but should take satis- 
faction. The greater the sacrifice, the greater will be 
their reward. 



APPENDIX 199 

I am glad to hear you say that America is loyal every- 
where. It is the right and duty of every citizen to see 
to it that this loyalty is entire, that those persons who 
are found uttering pro-German or anti-ally sentiments 
are arrested and brought before our department of justice. 
No person should have any regrets about being able to 
render such a service to our cause. 

But that brings me to think again about something 
that I have thought about a good deal lately. We have 
said a great deal about pro-Germanism and have con- 
demned it violently, but we have said comparatively 
little about the use of the German language, and what 
could be more pro-German than the German language, 
what could be more anti-American in these times? It is 
the official language of "Kaiserism," it is the agent by 
means of which it was sought to spread abroad even in 
our own fair land the much-despised German "Kultur." 

We have taught the German language in our schools. 
We were told it was next in importance to English itself. 
Now we find it hard to explain why German was any 
more important to our American than French or Italian 
or Spanish. In our churches we used the German language 
in the practice of our religion, in many instances among 
people who were born in America and educated in its 
schools and who certainly could more readily understand 
the English language. No one can easily explain the 
reason for the last mentioned stubbornness. 

Just before I left America some one suggested in my 
presence that we ought to bar the German language from 
a place in the course of study in our high schools. To 
this I objected. In our ardent patriotism we should be 
careful not to run off on a tangent, we should bear in mind 
the essentials and forget trivialities. Thus I argued. I 
had studied German, I could speak and even felt in a 
measure prepared to teach it. Was not the German lan- 
guage the language in which Goethe and Schiller expressed 
such noble truths and beautiful sentiments. There are 



20O APPENDIX 

noble truths and beautiful sentiments given expression 
in other languages too, but in their cases we use trans- 
lations. May we still love Goethe and Schiller, but at 
the same time realize that to-day their language is the 
language of "Kaiserism"* and "Kultur," which stands 
for everything that is low and mean and deceitful. We 
are living to-day, and must face conditions as they are 
to-day. To-day, the average American with average in- 
formation knows that it was part of a pre-conceived plan 
of Kaiser Wilhelm and his band of Potsdam cut-throats 
to have German taught in our schools, to have German 
used in our churches, to have newspapers published in 
the German language, which should exert an ever-in- 
creasing influence upon millions of people in America, of 
German descent, who in turn would By their vote have a 
tremendous influence upon the political situations, grad- 
ually bringing about a turn of events highly favorable to 
the propagation of German autocracy in America. 

We are at war with Germany, with Germans who speak 
as their language the German language. It can no longer 
be said of our troops that "they are going and will soon 
give an account of themselves.'* They are already here. 
They have shown on numerous occasions that they have 
the true American spirit. They have never yet been de- 
feated, no, not even by superior numbers. (I say this 
with some degree of pride and I know it is pardonable.) 
But to-day the American army does not consist alone 
of the men who are in France. Every American man, 
woman, and child whether in America or abroad is a soldier 
in our army. We have all enlisted. Those at home must 
be just as much loo-per-cent Americans as those keeping 
eternal vigilance in the dead of night at the edge of No 
Man's Land. The man who has lived in America and 
still enjoys its advantages and promises, and can speak 
only the German language, is not a loo-per-cent American. 
He does not and will not comprehend our American ideals 
and standards. 



APPENDIX 201 

He bears watching. The man who prefers to speak 
German even though he can speak some English is an 
enemy of the United States. Every American knows 
what should be done with him. Do you imagine that we 
allow our soldiers to speak the German language among 
themselves. I have never yet seen where they wanted 
to do it, but if they did, would we be right in allowing it. 
If I were to hear two men in America conversing in the 
enemy tongue, it would be my business to find out "why.'* 

America's men, the prime of her youth, are in France 
fighting for a principle. They are deprived of comfort, 
many are suffering and dying. Some of them will never 
again be able to return to the land of their youth and the 
land of promise; they gave all, and they gave it willingly. 
Some others will return even before the war is over. They 
will have given much, an arm, a limb or possibly their 
eyesight; and they will have given gladly and without 
complaint. You will receive them in America in a grand 
and beautiful way; no doubt you will make them feel 
that they are ** heroes." But tell me, are these same men 
to return to hear spoken all about them the German lan- 
guage, are German newspapers to announce their return 
and comment on their wounds, are they going to be in- 
sulted in such a fashion? Are they to go to church and 
hear Christianity preached to them in an enemy tongue.? 
Can you see how these boys could get a full measure of 
comfort out of a religion preached to them in the language 
of the enemy with whom they had been engaged in mortal 
combat, the enemy who violated every principle of that 
same religion which is Christianity? Tell me is there 
something essential to Christianity in the German lan- 
guage? Is it the language that makes Christianity or is 
it the spirit of Christ after all? Have we not heard about 
false gods somewhere, before this? 

Yes, these are tremendous times. There was a time 
when we would have said of a man who so desired, that 
he was an American until he proved by his conduct that 



202 APPENDIX 

he was otherwise. To-day is different. To-day we do 
not accept mere statements. To-day no man is a loyal 
American until he has proved himself to be one. What 
I mean to say is that to-day there is no passive Amer- 
icanism, to-day every loyal American must be an active 
American willing to co-operate in every way for the pro- 
motion of Americanism, ready to do all in his power to 
advance the cause for which we are struggling, and to 
suppress pro-Germanism and Pan-Germanism in what- 
ever form it may appear. 

When you go to the conference you will meet many 
with whom I am acquainted, probably many who have 
loved ones over here. Tell them for me that they shall 
be proud of their American soldiers, and even if there will 
be those who will not return, as there will be, they should 
not mourn but should have the same faith that their boys 
had, a faith in God, and in their cause, and an ever readi- 
ness to do the thing that was expected of them. 

Almost at the same time that this letter was 
written the following letter, preaching the same fine 
and lofty Americanism, was written me by a Catholic 
chaplain serving with the army under General 
Pershing. 

With the Army in France, 

Dugout No. , July i8, 191 8. 

Dear Colonel Roosevelt: 

In the name of this Artillery Brigade, upon the heroic 
death of your son and our comrade, Lieut. Roosevelt, I 
extend to the family our heartfelt condolences. To you. 
Sir, I have the honor of offering our congratulations. He 
died the death of a soldier. You would not have it other- 
wise. 

Your gallant son, who was one of the most dashing 



APPENDIX 203 

officers in an arm of the Service well known for reckless 
bravery, has not died in vain. His death in the great 
cause for which we are fighting, will do more to convince 
the hideous Hun of the earnestness of our purpose, than 
the work of an Army Division. Be assured that his heroic 
death will not go unavenged. We shall see to it that the 
barbarian pays for it in measure heaped up and running 
over. It has already enthused the Army and strength- 
ened our hands. 

Through you, may I send a message to the folks back 
home — particularly to my people of Irish lineage and 
the Catholics of America. If amongst them there re- 
mains a single individual obstinately "unconverted" to 
the righteousness of the cause for which we are here under 
the guns, that man is a traitor and should be dealt with 
accordingly. I am speaking as a priest of the Catholic 
Church when I say that I believe every one of our coun- 
trymen should develop a healthy hatred for the unre- 
generate German, and for everything that smacks of 
thrice-accursed German Kultur. 

I beg leave to send this message through you, because 
you were always just and fair to our Catholic people and 
they regard you as their friend. I am weighing my words, 
and can prove them when I say that nearly fifty per cent 
of the Army under fire to day is Catholic. England-baiters 
back home are doing their best to destroy the record that 
we are building. They deserve no quarter. 

You have been friendly to the Jew as well as to the 
Catholic. You may be interested therefore to know that 
many of our best officers and men are Jews. Among them 
I have the stanchest friends. As a Catholic priest, I 
take my hat off to the Jew for heroism on the field of 
battle and loyalty at home. 

Here too let me say a word for the Y. M. C. A. When 
the history of this great war is written, the historian will 
in justice be obliged to give not a little of the glory of 
victory to the courage, self-sacrifice, and efficiency of 



204 APPENDIX 

the men who wore the red triangle. I say to you, Sir, 
it is an inspiring sight to see the spirit of real fraternity 
there is among the troops in the field — Catholic and Prot- 
estant and Jew standing as one man presenting a solid 
front to a common enemy. And I believe, as I believe 
there is a God above, that one of the important by-prod- 
ucts of this war is going to be a better spirit of mutual 
understanding and toleration all around. The war is 
going to weld the country together as it never was welded 
before. The spirit of the men here is that we are going 
to win the war, though it cost the last dollar and the last 
man. We are counting on the same spirit at home and 
I believe that we are not going to be disappointed. 

Kindly pardon my undignified longhand script. A 
typewriting-machine is too great a luxury in this cave 
40 feet underground. Dugout No. — is not the most com- 
fortable office-room in the world. My mahogany desk is 
a pile of empty cartridge-boxes that threatens to topple 
over very time the earth quakes on the booming of our 
guns — ^which is almost continually. We all wear rubber 
boots and are splashed over with yellow mud and re- 
freshing ice cold spring-water. We sleep in our gas-masks. 
I have occupied more comfortable quarters, yet withal, 
I am very happy here. It is an excellent vantage-point 
from which to view and study Hunnish ruthlessness. If a 
Chaplain could be pardoned for quasi-profanity, I would 
say with all my heart: "Anathema sit to the accursed 
Hun and everything connected with his accursed scheme 
of world conquest." 

Very truly yours, 

Vincent J. Toole, 
Chaplain 324 Field Artillery. 



H 46-79 



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